ECLECTIC ENGLISH CLASSICS 



THE PRINCESS 



A MEDLEY 



ALFRED LORD TENNYSON 




AMERICAN • BOOK • COMPANY 
NEW YORK- CINCINNATI • CHICAGO 



yV^»-^^S-^^^^^^^^^»^»»^^':»<-€rC^<-C-<-«r€--€-€<-^^-^<--^^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

?RoS7^ 

Chap. Copyright No. 

ShelLAsAS 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




^/TUfuPl^^V^ 



ECLECTIC ENGLISH CLASSICS 



THE PRINCESS 

A MEDLEY 



BY 1/ 

ALFRED LORD TENNYSON 






¥ 



'^r^'*: /^ //v/^ 



NEW YORK •:• CINCINNATI •:• CHICAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 

1806 






Copyright, 1896, by 
American Book Company. 



THE PRINCESS. 

w. p. I 



INTRODUCTION. 



Alfred Tennyson was born on the 6th of August, 1809, at 
Somersby, a Httle village of Lincolnshire, England. His father, 
who was rector of the village, is said to have been a man of great 
physical strength and considerable accomplishment in music and 
the languages. "Tennyson's mother," writes Mrs. Ritchie, the 
poet's friend, ** was a sweet, gentle, and most imaginative woman." 
Of the children, several were gifted with the imaginative tempera- 
ment. Two sons older than Alfred became known as poets. 

The boys were educated for the most part at home. They were 
sturdy lads, leading an open-air life, wandering over the famous 
Lincolnshire wolds, sometimes far enough to look out upon the 
North Sea, and telling one another tales of marvelous adventure. 
''Their village," says Howitt, "is in a pretty pastoral district of 
soft, sloping hills and large ash trees. . » , There are also two 
brooks in the valley, which flow into one at the bottom of the 
glebe field, and by these the young poet used to wander and 
meditate." 

There is a legend that in their early boyish days the older 
brother Charles one time gave Alfred " a slate, and bade him 
write verses about the flowers in the garden." The tablet was 
soon covered. " Yes, you can write," said the elder, as he handed 

5 



6 INTRODUCTION, 

it back. " Poems by Two Brothers," Charles and Alfred, ap- 
peared in 1826. " Haec nos novimus esse nihil "^ was the 
motto of the book. 

In 1828 Alfred entered Cambridge, at a most fortunate mo- 
ment, it afterward seemed ; for Thackeray was there, and Jamci 
Spedding, Kinglake, Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Richard 
C. Trench, and others of coming renown. Moreover, in Cambridge 
was Arthur Hallam, son of Hallam the historian, who was to form 
a friendship with Tennyson of which all the world should hear; 
for, years after, to commemorate his friend, who died in the very 
promise of early manhood, Tennyson wrote " In Memoriam." 

Tennyson left Cambridge without taking his degree, and 
brought out, in 1830, "Poems, chiefly Lyrical." "They demon- 
strate the possession of powers," wrote John Stuart Mill, in the 
"Westminster Review," upon their appearance. "Their origi- 
nality will prevent their being generally appreciated for a time." 

It was in this decade that the great reform movement of this 
century began to stir the English nation. Reforms in politics, in 
religion, and in general social conditions were everywhere talked 
of. The humanitarianism of the movement seized Tennyson and 
affected his poetic spirit. To the influence of this agitation are 
doubtless traceable the tender sympathy and interest which add 
grace to some of his poems. He became, as he said of another, 
" no Sabbath drawler of old saws," but a poet who reflected the 
spirit of his time, albeit conservatively, and was of his time even 
in his endeavor after scientific phrase and analysis. 

Three years after the first appeared another volume, and from 
that time forward others, as "The Princess" (1847), " ^^ Memo- 
riam " (1850), " Maud " (1855), " Idyls of the King " (1859-85), 
1 " We know these things to be nothing." 



4 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

'' Enoch Arden " (1864), " Queen Mary " and " Harold " (1877), 
"The Promise of May" (1882), "The Falcon" and "Becket" 
(1884). 

In 1850, upon the death of Wordsworth, Tennyson was made 
poet laureate. In 1884 it was announced by an official gazette 
of Great Britain that he had been made Baron of Aldworth and 
Farringford. On the 6th of October, 1892, he died. 

Tennyson Hved in seclusion and much apart from the world, 
conscious all his life that what Milton said of himself he might 
also say : " My genius is such that no delay, no rest, no care or 
thought almost of anything, holds me aside until I reach the end 
and round off, as it were, some period of my studies." " What God 
has resolved concerning me I know not, but this I know at least, 
— he has instilled into me a vehement love of the beautiful." 

Tennyson was an Englishman who wrote for Enghshmen, and, 
most happily for him, of the calm skies and tracts of shady pas- 
ture, " terrace-lawns " and " homes of ancient peace." " He had," 
says one of his critics, " little faculty of piercing through the husk 
of the conventional to the living thoughts and passions of man 
which throb beneath." But he was, as he wrote, " devoured with 
the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, the love of love." He had 
the great gift also of the spirit of honor and duty and reverence, 
and of these he was never weary of singing. 

In diction Tennyson is always musical and pellucid. By the 
very clear and musical quality of his verse, and the perfection 
of its phrasing, line and stanza fasten themselves in mind and 
become a part of the treasures of memory. 

His poetry is rich in ornament. Indeed, its elaboration now 
and then detracts from its strength and vigor and human appeal. 
But in this patient working out is evident the dominant artistic 



INTRO D UCTION. 



I 



spirit of the poet, and the desire of beauty that would let nothiiij 
go before the world without the very last pohshing touch. Not 
infrequently the finished roll of vowel sound or the music of 
recurring liquids faintly suggests what the poetry itself describes.^ 



" A lovelier story than ' The Princess ' has not often been re- 
cited," says E. C. Stedman. " After the idylHc introduction, the 
body of the poem is composed in semi-heroic verse. Other works 
of our poet are greater, but none is so fascinating as this romantic 
tale, — English throughout, yet combining the England of Coeur 
de Lion with that of Victoria in one bewitching picture. Some 
of the author's most delicately musical lines — 'jewels five words 
long ' — are herein contained, and the ending of each canto is an 
effective piece of art." 

Tennyson wrote " The Princess " " among the fogs and smokes 
of Lincoln's Inn," Mrs. Ritchie bears witness. He called it " A 
Medley." In the Prologue ^ he says it is 

" To suit with time and place, 
A Gothic ruin and a Grecian house, 
A talk of college and of ladies' rights, 
A feudal knight in silken masquerade." 

The poem was doubtless written to help to the establishment 
of better relations between men and women, and the true idea of 
marriage as Tennyson conceived it. He had written in " Locks- 
ley Hall," 

" Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match'd with mine, 
Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine ; " 

1 See Prologue, line 20; Canto VII. lines 206, 207. 

2 See also Conclusion, lines 9-28. 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

and this idea seems always to have colored his opinion. He is 
never quite free from it even in the most rapt and exalted ideal- 
ism of the Prince.^ 

The relations of women to modern life were touched upon by 
Shelley in his ''Revolt of Islam" thirty years before "The Prin- 
cess " was published. " Can man," he asked, "be free if woman 
be a slave ? " With this poem writers on Tennyson's genius are 
apt to associate his prompting to treat the modern conditions of 
marriage. It may be ; but the idea of the changing status of 
women had been fermenting the life of the world much earHer 
and most profoundly. It came as a result of the proclamation of 
the rights of man by the French Revolution, and was a natural 
sequence of the declaration of the 4th of July, 1776. "The 
Princess " is but a poetic outburst of the large view which moved 
the popular mind, which impelled parliamentary action to better 
English laws regarding women, and incited the legislatures of the 
United States to declare that a married woman might own, man- 
age, control, and devise by will, property belonging to her, that 
she might carry on a trade and have the control of her earnings, 
and that she had certain rights and possession in her children. 
Laws which seem to us, fifty years later, the barest justice were 
opposed, debated, and, happily, passed in our American legislative 
halls, and in the English parliament also, in the fifth decade of 
this nineteenth century. At that time Tennyson was writing 
"The Princess." 

The idea of high schools for girls had in those days hardly 

sent down firm roots in the popular mind. The first public high 

school for young women which was attempted in Boston, in 1825, 

was closed after a year and a half. Report said that there were 

1 See Canto VII. lines 239 to end. 



lO INTRODUCTION. 

two reasons for shutting its doors: it had proved too costly 
($4,500 had been expended) ; and it seemed as if the girls would 
not leave its walls, so great was their craving for instruction. 

But the idea is still older than this experiment in our country. 
Mary Wollstonecraft, a hundred years ago, was writing in Eng- 
land : "I still insist that the knowledge of the two sexes should 
be the same in nature, . . . and that women, considered not 
only as moral but rational creatures, ought to endeavor to acquire 
human virtues, . . . instead of being educated like a fanciful 
kind of half-being." 

And to educate women was not new in England. Had we not 
Margaret Roper and Catherine Parr and Elizabeth Tudor? — and 
Jane Grey, who said to Schoolmaster Ascham, " My book . . . 
bringeth daily to me more pleasure and more, that in respect of 
it all other pleasures, in very deed, be but trifles and troubles 
unto me." 

This was in England, where the witty divine, Thomas Fuller 
(1608-61), when writing of girls in what he called the "she- 
schools " of his time, said : " The sharpness of their wits and the 
suddenness of their conceits, which their enemies must allow unto 
them, might by education be improved into a judicious soHdity, 
and that adorned with arts which now they want, not because 
they cannot learn, but are not taught them." It was in England 
where Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), in projecting an academy for 
women, begged that they might be " taught all sorts of breed- 
ing suitable to both their genius and their quality." 

But upon the Continent there had been Margaret of Navarre in 
France, Vittoria Colonna, Renee of FeiTara, and Olympia Morata 
in Italy. Hundreds of such women must have lived and died, 
who are now unknown to us. The names of a few have been 



INTR on UC TION. 1 1 

preserved because of some associations with which their Hves were 
interwoven. Through such preservation their full, strong char- 
acters gleam from the pages of history. It has never been ques- 
tioned that their womanly strength was in great measure due to 
the ampHtude and robustness of their studies. But besides these, 
to go still farther back, we have the nuns of centuries before 
Luther, who, like Heloise, in the retirement of the cloister trans- 
lated Scripture from the Hebrew and the Greek, and essayed in 
the sciences of the Trivhmi and Quadrivium courses of study in 
mediaeval universities. 

"But we have now far more data to go upon than Tennyson 
possessed," says Stopford A. Brooke in his work on Tenny- 
son. " The steady work of women during these fifty years, and 
the points they have so bravely won, have added element after 
element to our experience. But all that has been gained has 
made more plain that 

" ' The woman's cause is man's : they rise or sink 
Together. ' 

One is the equal half of the other ; the halves are diverse forever ; 
each complements each ; both united in diversity make the perfect 
humanity ; their work must be together in difference. . . . 

" But this does not cover all. In our complex and crowded 
society, there are thousands of women who have no home, who 
are not wives and mothers, but who are hungry to become them- 
selves, to realize themselves in work, to hve outside of themselves 
in the life and movement of the whole. These scarcely come 
into Tennyson's outlook at the end of 'The Princess.' For these, 
the education in knowledge and the training of their powers to 
all kinds of work, which Ida estabhshed in her college, are neces- 



12- INTRODUCTION. 

sary. . . . When that is possible — when we shall have applied to 
all the problems of society the new and as yet unused elements 
which exist in womanhood — all results will be reached twice as 
quickly as they are now reached, all human work will be twice 
as quickly done. And then, perhaps, some new poet will write a 
new * Princess.' " 

The story of " The Princess " is that of a prince who had been 
betrothed while yet a child to a child princess in the South. He 
had in all his growing years worn her portrait and made her his 
ideal. Upon his coming to manhood, his father, the king, sends 
an embassy and claims the maid for his son. But the Princess 
Ida refuses to marry, having conceived the idea of carrying on a 
college for women and educating them to nobler lives than they 
have to her time led. 

The Prince determines to seek the Princess, and, with two 
friends from his father's court, and in disguise, he penetrates the 
retirement of the college. The men are discovered, but are kept 
from the fate threatened in the sentence upon the gate, '* Let no 
man enter here on pain of death," by the Prince's saving Lady 
Ida's life in the confusion which follows the disclosure. 

The Princess refuses to acknowledge the bond of her betrothal, 
and calls upon her brothers to vindicate her will. All agree to 
settle the question by a mediaeval tournament, in which fifty 
knights on either side engage. The Prince is wounded and un- 
horsed. The Princess, overcome by her love for a child whose 
fate appeals to her, opens the college to the wounded, sends the 
students to their homes, and, becoming nurse to the Prince, ends 
the tale by losing her heart to him and promising marriage. 

" The scenery, too, of the piece is delightful," says Stopford A. 



I 



INTROD UCTION. 1 3 

Brooke, " full of sunshine, gaiety, and grace. The college, with 
its grounds and high-wrought architecture, courts and gardens, 
walls and fountains, brightened with glancing girls and silken-clad 
professors, is charmingly imagined. . . . Nature is not described 
for her own sake, but inwoven, in Tennyson's manner, with the 
emotions of those who are looking upon it. . . . The nature 
touches are chiefly in the comparisons ; and this is fitly so, for the 
human interest is manifold." 

" Finally, with regard to the poem as distinguished from the 
social question it speaks of, beauty is kept in it preeminent. 

"It is first in Tennyson's as it ought to be in every artist's 
heart. The subject matter is bent to the necessity of beauty. 
The knowledge displayed in it, the various theories concerning 
womanhood, the choice of scenery, the events, are all chosen and 
arranged so as to render it possible to enshrine them in beautiful 
shapes. This general direction toward loveliness is never lost 
sight of by the poet. It is not that moral aims are neglected, or 
the increase of human good, or the heightening of truth, or the 
declaring of knowledge ; but it is that all these things are made 
subservient to the manifestation of beauty. It is the artist's way, 
and it is the highest way. ... 

''' The woman's question is not by itself a lovely thing ; but it 
is made beautiful in ' The Princess ' because every one of its is- 
sues is solved by love, by an appeal to some kind or another of 
love, — to filial love, to motherly love, to the associated love of 
friendship, to the high and sacred love between a maiden and 
her lover, to the natural love which without particular direction 
arises out of pity for the helpless, and to the love we feel for the 
natural world. ... 

" But he [Tennyson] was so exalted by this abiding in love that 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

he could not help at times in the poem breaking out into lyric songs, 
in which he might express a keener feeling of beauty and reach a 
higher range of poetry than in the rest of the poem. ... So he 
wrote in the midst of the poem two love songs, — one of the sorrow 
of love passed by forever, of the days that are no more ; another, 
of the joyful hope of love, of the days that were to come. The 
first ol these, * Tears, Idle Tears,' as I have already said, repre- 
sents more nearly than any of the songs of Tennyson, but chiefly 
in the last verse, one phase, at least, of the passion of love be 
tween man and woman." The second song " is lovely in move- 
ment ; its wing-beating and swift-glancing verse is hke the flightj 
of the bird that has suggested it. 

" Both songs are unrhymed, yet no one needs the rhyme, so 
harmoniously is their assonance arranged, not so much at the end 
of each line as in the body of the lines themselves. ' Tears, Idle 
Tears,' is a masterpiece of the careful employment of vowels." 

The poet "celebrates love \xv six of its various phases, — in six 
delightful and happy songs inserted in the third edition between 
the main divisions of the poem. They were, he says, ballads or 
songs to give the poets breathing space. . . . They are all of a 
sweet and ' gentle humanity, of a fascinating and concentrated 
brevity, of common moods of human love, made by the poet's 
sympathy and art to shine like the common stars we love so well. 
The falling out of wife and husband reconciled over the grave 
of their child, the mother singing to her babe of his father com- 
ing home from sea, the warrior in battle thinking of his home, 
the iron grief of the soldier's wife melted at last into tears by his 
child laid upon her knee, the maiden yielding at last to the love 
she had kept at bay,— these are the simple subjects of these 
songs. . . . 



■ 

I 



INTRO D UCTION. 1 5 

** Among these the cradle song, 

" ' Sweet and low, sweet and low, 
Wind of the western sea,' 

is the most beautiful, and writes, as it were, its own music ; but 

the song, 

* ' ' The splendor falls on castle walls, 
And snowy summits old in story,' 

is the noblest, — a clear, uplifted, softly ringing song. . . . These 
are the songs of this delightful poem, and it is with some difficulty 
that we turn away from them." 1 

1 Tennyson : His Art and Relation to Modern Life, by Stopford A. 
Brooke. 



THE PRINCESS: 

A MEDLEY. 



PROLOGUE. 

Sir Walter Vivian ^ all a summer's day- 
Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun 
Up to the people. Thither flock'd at noon 
His tenants, wife and child, and thither half 
The neighboring borough, with their Institute 2 
Of which he was the patron. I was there 
From college, visiting the son, — the son 
A Walter too, — with others of our set, — 
Five others : we were seven at Vivian-place. 

And me that morning Walter show'd the house, 10 

Greek, set with busts ; from vases in the hall 
Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names,^ 
Grew side by side ; and on the pavement lay 

1 The prototype of Sir Walter Vivian was Edmund Henry Lushington, to 
whose son Tennyson dedicated The Princess. For " Vivian-place " the home 
of the Lushington family near Maidstone is described. 

2 A society or association organized for literary, scientific, or educational 
and social work; here probably a mechanics' institute. 

3 Their scientific names, which, to all but a botanist, are often meaning- 
less and ungraceful. 

2 17 



1 8 THE PRINCESS: [prologue. 

Carv'd stones of the abbey ruin ^ in the park, 

Huge ammonites,^ and the first bones of time;^ 

And on the tables every cHme and age 

Jumbled together, — celts ^ and calumets,^ 

Claymore ^ and snowshoe, toys in lava,^ fans 

Of sandal, amber, ancient rosaries. 

Laborious orient ivory, ^here in sphere,^ ao 

The curs'd Malayan crease,^ and battle clubs 

From the isles of palm ; and higher on the walls. 

Betwixt the monstrous horns of elk and deer, 

His own forefathers' arms and armor hung. 

And " This," he said, *' was Hugh's at Agincourt ; ^^ 
And that was old Sir Ralph's at Ascalon,ii — 
A good knight he! we keep a chronicle 
With all about him," — which he brought, and I 
Div'd in a hoard of tales that dealt with knights, 

1 Parliament, acting on the report of an examining commission, abolished 
the smaller monasteries in 1536 and the larger in 1538. - This was during the 
reign of Henry VIII. The deserted buildings in many places fell into ruins. 

2 The fossil shells of a kind of cuttlefish. They are coiled in a spiral like 
a ram's horn. 

3 " First bones of time," i.e., the fossil bones of the earliest animals pre- 
served to us. 

* Stone or bronze ax blades or chisels. 

' Tobacco pipes used by the Indians of North America. They were of 
soapstone bowl and a long reed tube trimmed with feathers, 

6 The heavy two-handed sword used by the Scottish Highlanders. 
''^ " In lava," i.e., cut out of lava stone. 

8 ** Laborious orient ivory," etc., i.e., ivory balls, one within another, 
elaborately wrought by the Chinese. This line describing them shows the 
same elaboration, and seems by the rolling of sound to suggest their motion 
(see Introduction, p. 8). 

9 A heavy dagger with a waved blade. 

10 A battle in which Henry V. gained a victory over the French in 141 5. 

11 A city on the Mediterranean, southwest of Jerusalem. It was taken 
by the crusaders in 1099, and a second time in 1192, when Richard Coeur de 
Lion gained a great victory over the Saracens led by Saladin. 



PROLOGUE.] A MEDLEY. 19 

Half legend, half historic, counts and kings 30 

Who laid about them ^ at their wills and died ; 
And mixt with these, a lady, one that arm'd 
Her own fair head, and, sallying thro' the gate, 
Had beat her foes with slaughter from her walls. 

" O miracle of women," said the book, 
" O noble heart who, being strait-besieg'd 
By this wild king to force her to his wish. 
Nor bent, nor broke, nor shunn'd a soldier's death, 
But now, when all was lost or seem'd as lost, — 
Her stature more than mortal in the burst 40 

Of sunrise, her arm lifted, eyes on fire, — 
Brake 2 with a blast of trumpets from the gate, 
And, falling on them like a thunderbolt. 
She trampled some beneath her horses' heels. 
And some were whelm'd with missiles of the wall, 
And some were push'd with lances from the rock, 
And part were drown' d within the whirling brook. 
O miracle of noble womanhood!" 

So sang the gallant, glorious chronicle ; 
And, I all rapt in this, " Come out," he said, 50 

" To the abbey ; there is aunt Elizabeth 
And sister Lilia with the rest." We went 
(I kept the book and had my finger in it) 
Down thro' the park. Strange was the sight to me; 
For all the sloping pasture murmur'd, sown 
With happy faces and with holiday. 
There mov'd the multitude, a thousand heads ; 
The patient leaders of their Institute 
Taught them with facts. One rear'd a font of stone, 

1 " Laid about them," i.e., struck on all sides. This line refers to certain 
habits of mediaeval times when fighting was pleasantry and recreatioji. 

2 An old form of " broke." 



20 THE PRINCESS: [prologue. 

And drew, from butts of water on the slope, 60 

The fountain of the moment, playing now 

A twisted snake, and now a rain of pearls. 

Or steep-up ^ spout, whereon the gilded ball 

Danc'd like a wisp.^ And somewhat lower down 

A man with knobs and wires and vials ^ fired 

A cannon ; Echo * answer'd in her sleep 

From hollow fields. And here were telescopes 

For azure views ; and there a group of girls 

In circle waited, whom the electric shock 

Dislink'd ^ with shrieks and laughter. Round the lake 70 

A little clockwork steamer paddling phed, 

And shook the lilies ; perch'd about the knolls 

A dozen angry models jetted steam ; 

A petty railway ran ; a fire balloon 

Rose gemlike up before the dusky groves 

And dropt a fairy parachute and past ; 

And there thro' twenty posts of telegraph 

They flash'd a saucy message to and fro 

Between the mimic stations ; so that sport 

Went hand in hand with science ; otherwhere 80 

Pure sport : a herd of boys with clamor bowl'd 

And stump'd ^ the wicket ; babies roll'd about 

Like tumbled fruit in grass ; and men and maids 

Arrang'd a country dance, and flew thro' hght 

And shadow, while the twanghng violin 

Struck up with " Soldier-laddie," and overhead 

1 Ascending steeply. 

2 A meteoric light which dances above the ground, chiefly in marshy 
places. In legend it is a lamp carried by Will-o'-the-wisp, or Jack-o'-lantern, 
to lead travelers into dangerous places. 

3 For forming and conducting electricity. 

* In Greek legend Echo was a mountain nymph. 
^ Unlinked; separated. 

^ In the game of cricket, to " stump the wicket" is to knock down the 
stumps of the wicket. 



PROLOGUE.] A MEDLEY. 

The broad ambrosial i aisles of lofty lime 

Made noise with bees and breeze from end to end. 



Strange was the sight and smacking of the time ; 
And long we gaz'd, but satiat'd at length 90 

Came to the ruins. High-arch'd and ivy-claspt, 
Of finest Gothic, lighter than a fire,^ 
Thro' one wide chasm of time and frost they gave ^ 
The park, the crowd, the house ; but all within 
The sward was trim as any garden lawn. 
And here we Ht on aunt Ehzabeth, 
And Lilia with the rest, and lady friends 
From neighbor seats ;^ and there was Ralph himself, 
A broken statue propt against the wall, 

As gay as any. Lilia, wild with sport, 100 

Half child, half woman as she was, had wound 
A scarf of orange round the stony helm,^ 
And rob'd the shoulders in a rosy silk. 
That made the old wamor from his ivied nook 
Glow like a sunbeam. Near his tomb a feast 
Shone, silver-set ; about it lay the guests. 
And there we join'd them. Then the maiden aunt 
Took this fair day for text, and from it preach'd 
An universal culture for the crowd,^ 

And all things great; but we, unworthier, told no 

Of college : he ^ had climb'd across the spikes. 
And he had squeez'd himself betwixt the bars,^ 

1 Fragrant ; of the quality of ambrosia, the food of the gods. 

2 Gothic architecture is characterized by lightness and delicacy. It pre- 
vailed in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 

3 Gave a view of the park, etc., through a rent in the wall. 
* Country houses. 5 Helmet. 

6 The mass of the people. 

■^ "He . . . he " here means one . . « another. 

8 Of the college walls. 



2 2 THE PRINCESS: [prologue. 

And he had breath'd the proctor's dogs;^ and one 
Discuss'd his tutor, rough to common men, 
But honeying 2 at the whisper of a lord ; 
And one the master,^ as a rogue in grain 
Veneer'd with sanctimonious theory. 

But while they talk'd, above their heads I saw 
The feudal warrior lady-clad, which brought 
My book to mind ; and opening this I read 120 

Of old Sir Ralph a page or two that rang 
With tilt and tourney ; then the tale of her 
That drove her foes with slaughter from her walls, 
And much I prais'd her nobleness ; and " Where," 
Ask'd Walter, patting LiHa's head (she lay 
Beside him), "lives there such a woman now? " 

Quick answer'd Liha : " There are thousands now 
Such women, but convention * beats them down ; 
It is but bringing up, no more than that. 

You men have done it — how I hate you all! 130 

Ah, were I something great! I wish I were 
Some mighty poetess, I would shame you then, 
That love to keep us children! Oh, I wish 
That I were some great princess, I would build 
Far off from men a college like a man's. 
And I would teach them all that men are taught ; 
We are twice as quick!" And here she shook aside 
The hand that play'd the patron with her curls. 

And one said smiling : '' Pretty were the sight 
If our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt 140 

1 " Breath'd the proctor's dogs," i.e., made the attendants of the proc- 
tor run until they were out of breath. A proctor is a university or college 
officer whose duty it is to keep good order. 

2 Becoming mild and affable. 3 The head of the college. 
4 Custom ; common opinion. 



PROLOGUE.] A MEDLEY. 33 

With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans, 
And sweet girl graduates in their golden hair. 
I think they should not wear our rusty gowns, 
But move as rich as emperor-moths,^ or Ralph 
Who shines so in the corner ; yet I fear, 
If there were many Lilias in the brood, 
However deep you might embower the nest, 
Some boy would spy it." 

At this upon the sward 
She tapt her tiny silken-sandal'd foot : 

" That's your light way ; but I would make it death 150 

For any male thing but to peep at us." 

Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laugh'd ; 
A rosebud set with little willful thorns, 
And sweet as English air could make her, she ; 
But Walter hail'd a score of names upon her. 
And " petty ogress," and " ungrateful puss," 
And swore he long'd at college, only long'd — 
All else was well — for she-society.^ 
They boated and they cricketed ; they talk'd 
At wine, in clubs, of art, of politics ; 160 

They lost their weeks ;^ they vext the souls of deans ; 
They rode ; they betted ; made a hundred friends, 
And caught the blossom of the flying terms. 
But miss'd the mignonette of Vivian-place, 
The little hearth-flower Lilia. Thus he spoke. 
Part banter, part affection. 

** True," she said, 
" We doubt not that. O yes, you miss'd us much. 
I'll stake my ruby ring upon it you did." 

1 A splendid kind of moth. 

2 An old usage of " she," meaning here woman's (see Introduction, p. 8). 

3 " Lost their weeks," i.e., were irregular in attendance. To gain a degree 
at the university, residence for a certain number of terms, and a certain part of 
each term, is necessary. 



24 THE PRINCESS: [prologue. 

She held it out ; and as a parrot turns 
Up thro' gilt wires a crafty, loving eye, 170 

And takes a lady's finger with all care. 
And bites it for true heart and not for harm, 
So he with Lilia's. Daintily she shriek'd, 
And wrung it. '' Doubt my word again! " he said. 
" Come, listen! here is proof that you were miss'd: 
We seven stay'd at Christmas up ^ to read ; 
And there we took one tutor, as to read.^ 
The hard-grain'd muses of the cube and square ^ 
Were out of season ; never man, I think. 

So molder'd in a sinecure as he ; 180 

For while our cloisters echo'd frosty feet. 
And our long walks were stript as bare as brooms, 
We did but talk you over, pledge you all 
In wassail; often, like as many girls, — 
Sick for the hollies and the yews* of home, — 
As many little trifling LiHas, — play'd 
Charades and riddles as at Christmas here. 
And ivhafs my thought and when and where and how. 
And often told a tale from mouth to mouth 
As here at Christmas." 

She remember'd that ; 190 

A pleasant game, she thought ; she lik'd it more 
Than magic music, forfeits, all the rest. 
But these, — what kind of tales did men tell men. 
She wonder'd, by themselves? 

A half-disdain 
Perch'd on the pouted blossom of her lips ; 

1 " Stay'd . . . up," i.e., stayed at college instead of going home. 

2 " As to read," i.e., as if to study. "To read" is an expression used 
in English universities for " to study." 

3 " The hard-grain'd muses," etc., i.e., the severe divinities presiding over 
mathematics. 

4 Holly and yew are Christmas greens. 



PROLOGUE.] A MEDLEY. ^5 

And Walter nodded at me : " He began ; 

The rest would follow, each in turn ; and so 

We forg'd a sevenfold story. Kind ? what kind? 

Chimeras, crotchets, Christmas solecisms, 

Seven-headed monsters only made to kill 200 

Time by the fire in winter." 

** Kill him now. 
The tyrant! kill him in the summer too," 
Said Liha. "Why not now? " the maiden aunt. 
"Why not a summer's as a winter's tale? 
A tale for summer as befits the time. 
And something it should be to suit the place, 
Heroic, — for a hero lies beneath, — 
Grave, solemn ! " 

Walter warp'd his mouth at this 
To something so mock-solemn that I laugh'd, 
And Liha woke with sudden-shrilling mirth 210 

An echo like a ghostly woodpecker, 
Hid in the ruins ; till the maiden aunt 
(A little sense of wrong had touch'd her face 
With color) turn'd to me with : " As you will ; 
Heroic if you will, or what you will. 
Or be yourself your hero if you will." 

" Take Lilia, then, for heroine," clamor'd he, 
" And make her some great princess, six feet high, 
Grand, epic,^ homicidal; 2 and be you 
The prince to win her! " 

"Then follow me, the prince," 220 
I answer'd ; " each be hero in his turn ! 
Seven and yet one, like shadows in a dream. 
Heroic seems our princess as requir'd, 
But something made to suit with time and place, 

1 Of heroic character ; imposing. 

2 Refers to the sentiments expressed in Lilia's speech (lines 127-137). 



26 THE PRINCESS: [prologue. 

A Gothic ruin and a Grecian house, 

A talk of college and of ladies' rights, 

A feudal knight in silken masquerade, 

And, yonder, shrieks and strange experiments 

For which the good Sir Ralph had burnt them all,i— 

This were a medley! we should have him 2 back 230 

Who told the ' Winter's Tale ' to do it for us. 

No matter ; we will say whatever comes. 

And let the ladies sing us, if they will, 

From time to time, some ballad, or a song. 

To give us breathing space." 

So I began, 
And the rest follow'd ; and the women sang 
Between the rougher voices of the men. 
Like linnets in the pauses of the wind. 
And here I give the story and the songs. 

1 Sir Ralph, who was at Ascalon (line 26). The experiments told of in 
lines 59-80 would in the middle ages have been looked upon as witchcraft 
or the invention of the devil, and the practicers would have been burned, or 
have met with some other terrible punishment. 

2 Shakespeare. 



CANTO I.] A MEDLEY. 27 



CANTO I. 

A Prince I was, blue-eyed, and fair in face, 
Of temper amorous as the first of May, 
With lengths of yellow ringlet, like a girl, 
For on my cradle shone the Northern star.i 

There liv'd an ancient legend in our house : 
Some sorcerer, whom a far-off grandsire burnt 
Because he cast no shadow,^ had foretold, 
Dying,^ that none of all our blood should know 
The shadow from the substance, and that one 
Should come to fight with shadows and to fall; 10 

For so, my mother said, the story ran. 
And, truly, waking dreams were, more or less, 
An old and strange affection of the house. 
Myself, too, had weird seizures. Heaven knows what : 
On a sudden, in the midst of men and day. 
And while I walk'd and talk'd as heretofore, 
I seem'd to move among a world of ghosts. 
And feel myself the shadow of a dream. 
Our great court- Galen ^ pois'd his gilt-head cane, 

1 " For on my cradle," etc., i.e., for I was born in the North. 

2 And was therefore a wizard or magician. 

3 The gift of prophecy was supposed to belong to the dying. 

4 Galen (130-200) was the most eminent physician of his time, and for 
more than a thousand years the leading medical authority of Europe. A cane, 
headed with gold or other rich material, was an indispensable bit of furniture 
in a doctor's practice at one time in England. Poor Goldsmith, for instance, 
when seeking the practice of his profession, first bought himself a cane. 

27 



28 THE PRINCESS: [canto i. 

And paw'd his beard, and mutter'd, '' Catalepsy." 20 

My mother, pitying, made a thousand prayers ; 

My mother was as mild as any saint, 

Half canoniz'd by all that look'd on her. 

So gracious was her tact and tenderness. 

But my good father thought a king a king ; 

He car'd not for the affection of the house ; 

He held his scepter like a pedant's ^ wand, 

To lash offense, and with long arms and hands 

Reach'd out, and pick'd offenders from the mass 

For judgment. 

Now it chanc'd that I had been, 30 

While hfe was yet in bud and blade, betroth'd 
To one, a neighboring Princess ; she to me 
Was proxy-wedded ^ with a bootless calf 
At eight years old ; and still from time to time 
Came murmurs of her beauty from the South, 
And of her brethren, youths of puissance;^ 
And still I wore her picture by my heart. 
And one dark tress ; and all around them both 
Sweet thoughts would swarm, as bees about their queen. 

But when the days drew nigh that I should wed, 40 

My father sent ambassadors with furs 
And jewels, gifts, to fetch her. These brought back 
A present, a great labor of the loom ; 
And therewithal an answer vague as wind : 
Besides, they saw the king ; he took the gifts ; 

1 An old use of the word in the sense of " schoolmaster." 

2 Wedded to a substitute who represented the Prince. Such marriages 
sometimes took place in the middle ages, and so late as at the end of the fif- 
teenth century. " With a bootless calf" refers to a part of such ceremony 
which was occasionally undertaken, the substitute or proxy of the bride- 
groom appearing in the presence of the bride with " his leg stript naked to 
the knee." 

3 Strength, vigor. 



CANTO I.] A MEDLEY. 29 

He said there was a compact, that was true ; 
But then she had a will ; was he to blame ? 
And maiden fancies ; lov'd to live alone 
Among her women ; certain, would not wed. 

That morning in the presence room 1 I stood 50 

With Cyril and with Florian, my two friends : 
The first, a gentleman of broken means 
(His father's fault), but given to starts and bursts 
Of revel ; and the last, my other heart, 
And almost my half-self, for still we mov'd 
Together, twinn'd as horse's ear and eye. 

Now, while they spake, I saw my father's face 
Grow long, and troubled like a rising moon,2 
Inflam'd with wrath. He started on his feet. 
Tore the king's letter, snow'd it down, and rent 60 

The wonder of the loom thro' warp and woof 
From skirt to skirt ; and at the last he sware ^ 
That he would send a hundred thousand men. 
And bring her in a whirlwind ; then he chew'd 
The thrice-turn'd cud of wrath, and cook'd his spleen,^ 
Communing with his captains of the war. 

At last I spoke : " My father, let me go. 
It cannot be but some gross error Hes 
In this report, this answer of a king 

Whom all men rate as kind and hospitable ; 70 

Or, maybe, I myself, my bride once seen, 

1 " Presence room," i.e., the room in which the king received his guests. 

2 The moon appears red, or " troubled," when near the horizon and seen 
through the mist and dust of the lower air. 

^ Old fqjrm of " swore." 

4 "Cook'd his spleen," i.e., nursed and kept warm his wrath. The 
phrase is Homeric, and refers to the old belief that the seat of anger is in 
the spleen. 



30 THE PRINCESS: [canto i. 

Whate'er my grief to find her less than fame, 

May rue the bargain made." And Florian said : 

" I have a sister at the foreign court, 

Who moves about the Princess ; she, you know. 

Who wedded with a nobleman from thence ; 

He, dying lately, left her, as I hear, 

The lady of three castles in that land. 

Thro' her this matter might be sifted clean." 

And Cyril whisper'd: "Take me with you, too." 80 

Then, laughing, " What if these weird seizures come 

Upon you in those lands, and no one near 

To point you out the shadow from the truth! 

Take me ; I'll serve you better in a strait ; 

I grate on rusty hinges here." But " No! " 

Roar'd the rough king, " you shall not ; we ourself 

Will crush her pretty maiden fancies dead 

In iron gauntlets ; break the council up." 

But when the council broke, I rose and past 
Thro' the wild woods that hung about the town, 90 

Found a still place, and pluck'd her likeness out;^ 
Laid it on flowers, and watch'd it lying bath'd 
In the green gleam of dewy-tassel'd trees. 
What were those fancies? wherefore break her troth? 
Proud look'd the lips ; but while I meditated 
A wind arose and rush'd upon the South, 
And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks 
Of the wild woods together ; and a Voice 
Went with it, " Follow, follow, thou shalt win." 

Then, ere the silver sickle of that month 100 

Became her golden shield,^ I stole from court 

1 "Pluck'd her likeness out," i.e., drew out the likeness from some 
keeping place about him. 

2 " Ere the silver sickle," etc., i.e., before the new moon had grown full, 



CANTO I.] A MEDLEY. 31 

With Cyril and with Florian, unperceiv'd, 

Cat-footed thro' the town, and half in dread 

To hear my father's clamor at our backs, 

With " Ho! " from some bay window shake the night ; 

But all was quiet. From the bastion'd walls. 

Like threaded spiders, one by one we dropt, 

And, flying, reach' d the frontier ; then we crost 

To a livelier land ; and so by tilth and grange,^ 

And vines, and blowing bosks ^ of wilderness, no 

We gain'd the mother-city,^ thick with towers. 

And in the imperial palace found the king. 

His name was Gama ; crack'd and small his voice, 
But bland the smile that, like a wrinkling wind 
On glassy water, drove his cheek in lines ; 
A little dry old man, without a star,* 
Not hke a king. Three days he feasted us, 
And on the fom-th I spake of why we came. 
And my betroth'd. " You do us, Prince," he said. 
Airing a snowy hand and signet gem,^ 120 

" All honor. We remember love omrself 
In our sweet youth. There did a compact pass 
Long summers back, a kind of ceremony, — 
I think the year in which our olives fail'd. 
I would you had her. Prince, with all my heart, 
With my full heart ; but there were widows here, 
Two widows. Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche ; 
They fed her theories, in and out of place 
Maintaining that with equal husbandry ^ 

1 " Tilth and grange," i.e., tillage ground and farmhouse. 

2 " Blowing bosks," i.e., blossoming thickets. 

3 The Anglo-Saxon translation of the Greek word metropolis. 

4 A decoration indicating military life. 

5 ** Signet gem," i.e., upon the stone was cut his seal. 

^ Care and diligence ; but the word is also used suggestively. 



32 THE PRINCESS: [cant© i. 

The woman were an equal to the man. 130 

They harp'd on this ; with this our banquets rang ; 

Our dances broke and buzz'd in knots of talk ; - 

Nothing but this ; my very ears were hot 

To hear them. Knowledge, so my daughter held, 

Was all in all ; 1 they had but been, she thought. 

As children ; they must lose the child, assume 

The woman. 2 Then, sir, awful odes she wrote, — 

Too awful, sure, for what they treated of. 

But all she is and does is awful, — odes 

About this losing of the child; and rhymes 140 

And dismal lyrics, prophesying change 

Beyond all reason. These the women sang ; 

And they that know such things, — I sought but peace. 

No critic I,— would call them masterpieces; 

They master'd 7ne. At last she begg'd a boon, 

A certain summer palace which I have 

Hard by your father's frontier. I said " No," 

Yet, being an easy man, gave it ; and there. 

All wild to found an University 

For maidens, on the spur she fled ; and more 150 

We know not, — only this: they see no men. 

Not even her brother Arac, nor the twins. 

Her brethren, tho' they love her, look upon her 

As on a kind of paragon ; and I 

(Pardon me saying it) were much loath to breed 

Dispute betwixt myself and mine. But since 

(And I confess with right) you think me bound 

In some sort, I can give you letters to her ; 

And yet, to speak the truth, I rate your chance 

Almost at naked nothing." 

1 What had been denied her would, she thought, accomplish the better- 
ment for women which she sought. 

2 " Lose the child," etc., i.e., put away childish things, and live as a 
reasonable being responsible for her acts. 



CANTO I.] A MEDLEY. 33 

Thus the king; 160 

And I, tho' nettled that he seem'd to slur 
With garrulous ease and oily courtesies 
Our formal compact/ yet, not less, (all frets 2 
But chafing me, on fire to find my bride,) 
Went forth again with both my friends. We rode 
Many a long league back to the North. At last, 
From hills that look'd across a land of hope, 
We dropt with evening on a rustic town 
Set in a gleaming river's crescent curve, 

Close at the boundary of the liberties;^ 170 

There enter'd an old hostel,* call'd mine host 
To council, phed him with his richest wines, 
And show'd the late-writ letters of the king. 

He, with a long, low sibilation,^ star'd 
As blank as death in marble ; then exclaim'd, 
Averring it was clear against all rules 
For any man to go ; but as his brain 
Began to mellow, if the king, he said, 
Had given us letters, was he bound to speak? 
The king would bear him out ; and at the last, — 180 

The summer of the vine ^ in all his veins, — 
No doubt that we might make it worth his while. 
She once had past that way ; he heard her speak ; 
She scar'd him ; life ! he never saw the like ; 
She look'd as grand as doomsday, and as grave. 
And he, he reverenc'd his hege lady there ; 

1 Of the early proxy wedding. 2 Hindrances ; obstacles. 

3 The estate within which the associates of the college were free to move. 

4 Inn. 

5 Not expressive of disfavor, as the hiss is interpreted, but more like a 
whistle of surprise. 

6 " The summer of the vine," i.e., the warmth of the summer stored in 
the juice of the grape which " mine host " had been drinking. 

3 



34 THE PRINCESS: [cantc 

He always made a point to post ^ with mares ; 

His daughter and his housemaid were the boys;^ 

The land, he understood, for miles about 

Was tiird by women ; all the swine were sows, i 

And all the dogs — 

But while he jested thus, 
A thought flash'd thro' me which I cloth'd in act, 
Remembering how we three presented ^ Maid, 
Or Nymph, or Goddess, at high tide of feast. 
In mask or pageant, at my father's court. 
We sent mine host to purchase female gear ; 
He brought it, and himself, a sight to shake 
The midriff of Despair with laughter, holp * 
To lace us up, till, each, in maiden plumes 
We rustled. Him we gave a costly bribe 2 

To guerdon ^ silence, mounted our good steeds, 
And boldly ventured on the liberties. 

We follow'd up the river as we rode. 
And rode till midnight, when the college lights 
Began to glitter fireflylike in copse 
And linden alley ; then we past an arch. 
Whereon a woman-statue rose with wings 
From four wing'd horses dark against the stars ; 
And some inscription ran along the front. 
But deep in shadow. Further on we gain'd 2 

A little street, half garden and half house ; 
But scarce could hear each other speak for noise 
Of clocks and chimes, like silver hammers falling 
On silver anvils, and the splash and stir 
Of fountains spouted up and showering down 
In meshes of the jasmine and the rose ; 

1 To travel, or to arrange the service of stage for those who travel, 

2 Postilions. 3 Took the part of; represented. 
4 The old past tense of " help." 5 Reward. 



CANTO I.] A MEDLEY. 35 

And all about us peal'd the nightingale, 
Rapt in her song, and careless of the snare. 

There stood a bust of Pallas ^ for a sign, 
By two sphere lamps blazon'd hke heaven and earth 220 

With constellation and with continent,^ 
Above an entry. Riding in, we call'd ; 
A plump-arm'd ostleress and a stable wench 
Came running at the call, and help'd us down. 
Then stept a buxom hostess forth, and sail'd. 
Full-blown, before us into rooms which gave ^ 
Upon a pillar'd porch, the bases lost 
In laurel. Her we ask'd of that and this. 
And who were tutors.^ '' Lady Blanche," she said, 
'*And Lady Psyche." "Which was prettiest, 230 

Best-natured? " " Lady Psyche." " Hers are we," 
One voice, we cried ; and I sat down and wrote, 
In such a hand as when a field of corn 
Bows all its ears before the roaring East:^ 

" Three ladies of the northern empire pray 

Your Highness would enroll them with your own. 

As Lady Psyche's pupils." 

This I seal'd; 
The seal was Cupid bent above a scroll. 
And o'er his head Uranian Venus hung, 

1 Pallas Athene, the Greek goddess of wisdom. 

2 " Blazon'd like heaven and earth," etc., i.e., embellished with devices, 
the one showing the face of the earth, the other the map of the sky. 

3 Opened. 

4 In English universities, officers who have care of undergraduates, ad- 
vising them in their studies, expenditures, etc. 

5 The handwriting of women was formerly sloping or running, and hence 
the Prince's adoption of such script. This simile is from Homer's Iliad, 
Book II. lines 147, 148. 



36 THE PRINCESS: [canto i. 

And rais'd the blinding bandage from his eyes.i 240 

I gave the letter to be sent with dawn ; 

And then to bed, where half in doze I seem'd 

To float about a glimmering night, and watch 

A full sea, glaz'd with muffled moonlight,^ swell 

On some dark shore just seen that it was rich.^ 



As thro' the land at eve we went, 

And pluck'd the ripen'd ears, 
We fell out, my wife and I, 
O we fell out, I know not why, 

And kiss'd again with tears. 
And blessings on the falling out 

That all the more endears. 
When we fall out with those we love 

And kiss again with tears ! 
For when we came where lies the child 

We lost in other years, 
There above the little grave, 
O there above the little grave. 

We kiss'd again with tears. * 

1 Over Cupid, the son of Love, or Venus, hung Spiritual Love, or Ura- 
nian Venus, and by her purifying presence made him, who was blind, see. 

2 Of this line Tennyson wrote to Mr. Dawson, the author of " Study of 
* The Princess : ' " 

" There was a period in my life when, as an artist — Turner for instance 
—takes rough sketches of landskip, etc., in order to work them eventually 
into some great picture, so I was in the habit of chronicling, in four or five 
words or more, whatever might strike me as picturesque in nature. I never 
put these down, and many and many a line has gone away on the north wind ; 
but some remain, e.g. : 

A full sea, glazed with mufifled moonlight. 

Suggestion: The sea one night at Torquay, when Torquay was the most lovely 
sea village in England, though now a smoky town. The sky was covered with 
thin vapor and the moon was behind it." 

3 " Just seen that it was rich," i.e., just recognized as being rich. 

4 See Prologue, lines 236-239; Conclusion, line 15; Introduction, p. 14. 



CANTO II.] A MEDLEY. 37 



CANTO II. 

At break of day the college portress came ; 

She brought us academic silks, in hue 

The lilac, with a silken hood to each, 

And zon'd with gold ; and now when these were on, 

And we as rich as moths from dusk cocoons, 

She, curtsying her obeisance, let us know 

The Princess Ida waited. Out we pac'd, 

I first, and, following thro' the porch that sang ^ 

All round with laurel, issued in a court 

Compact of lucid ^ marbles, boss'd^ with lengths 10 

Of classic frieze, with ample awnings gay 

Betwixt the pillars, and with great urns of flowers. 

The Muses and the Graces,* group'd in threes, 

Enring'd a billowing fountain in the midst ; 

And here and there on lattice edges lay 

Or book or lute ; but hastily we past. 

And up a flight of stairs into the hall. 

There at a board by tome and paper sat, 
With two tame leopards couch'd beside her throne. 
All beauty compass'd in a female form, 20 

The Princess ; liker to the inhabitant 
Of some clear planet close upon the sun, 
Than our man's earth ; such eyes were in her head. 
And so much grace and power, breathing down 

1 Referring to the murmuring or humming of the wind through the leaves. 

2 Means here shining ; bright ; resplendent. 
^ Embossed ; bestudded. 

* In Greek mythology, the Muses, who were nine in number, presided 
over literature, art, and the sciences. The Graces were three goddesses of 
loveliness and joy in nature and human life. 



38 THE PRINCESS: [canto ii. 

From over her arch'd brows, with every turn 
Liv'd thro' her to the tips of her long hands, 
And to her feet. She rose her height, and said : 

" We give you welcome. Not without redound ^ 
Of use and glory to yourselves ye come. 

The first fruits of the stranger ; after time, 30 

And that full voice which circles round the grave. 
Will rank you nobly, mingled up with me. 
What! are the ladies of your land so tall? " 
" We of the court," said Cyril. " From the court," 
She answer'd ; " then ye know the Prince ? " And he : 
" The climax of his age ! as tho' there were 
One rose in all the world, your Highness that, 
He worships your ideal." 2 She replied : 
" We scarcely thought in our own hall to hear 
This barren verbiage, current among men, 40 

Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment. 
Your flight from out your bookless wilds would seem 
As arguing love of knowledge and of power ; 
Your language proves you still the child. Indeed, 
We dream not of him ; when we set our hand 
To this great work, we purpos'd with ourself 
Never to wed. You likewise will do well, 
Ladies, in entering here, to cast and fling 
The tricks which make us toys of men, that so. 
Some future time, if so indeed you will, 50 

You may with those self-styl'd our lords ally 
Your fortunes, justlier balanc'd, scale with scale." 

At those high words, we, conscious of ourselves, 
Perus'd the matting ; then an officer 
Rose up, and read the statutes, such as these : 

1 Return; result. 

2 " Your ideal," i.e., his idea or conception of you. 



CANTO II.] A MEDLEY. 39 

Not for three years to correspond with home ; 

Not for three years to cross the Hberties ; 

Not for three years to speak with any men ; 

And many more, which hastily subscrib'd, 

We enter'd on the boards.^ And " Now," she cried, 60 

"Ye are green wood; see ye warp not. Look, our hall! 

Our statues! — not of those that men desire, 

Sleek Odahsques,2 or oracles of mode, 

Nor stunted squaws of West or East ; but she ^ 

That taught the Sabine how to rule, and she * 

The foundress of the Babylonian wall, 

The Carian Artemisia ^ strong in war. 

The Rhodope^ that built the pyramid, 

Clelia,'^ Cornelia,^ with the Palmyrene^ 

1 " Enter'd on the boards," i.e., entered our names on the college reg- 
ister. 2 Female slaves in the East. 

3 Egeria, one of the prophetic nymphs of ancient Italy, from whom Numa 
Pompilius, second king of Rome, received instruction regarding forms of wor- 
ship. He was a Sabine by birth. 

^ Semiramis, the mythical founder of the Assyrian Empire. The building 
of Babylon, with all its wonders, is referred to her. 

5 Queen of Halicarnassus, the strongest city in all Caria. She was a vas- 
sal of the Persian empire, and joined Xerxes in his expedition against Greece 
in 480 B.C. At the battle of Salamis she distinguished herself by her courage 
and perseverance, and upon her destruction of a ship Xerxes is said to have 
exclaimed: " My men have become women; my women, men." 

6 A Greek slave who lived in the seaport of ancient Egypt, and to whom, 
on account of her beauty and fame, the building of the third pyramid was re- 
ferred. History has contradicted her right to the foundation, and declares it 
to have been made by the beautiful Egyptian queen Nitocris. 

'^ A Roman maiden, one of the twenty hostages given Lars Porsena, King 
of Clusium, when he withdrew his troops from Rome. She escaped from 
the Etruscans and swam across the Tiber. The Romans sent her back, but 
Porsena dismissed her with a part of the hostages ; and later her countrymen 
honored her with a statue. 

8 The daughter of Scipio Africanus and mother of the Gracchi. 

9 Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, who, upon the death of her husband, in 
266, became regent for her sons. She led her troops in martial attire and 



40 THE PRINCESS: [canto ii. 

That fought AureHan, and the Roman brows 70 

Of Agrippina.i Dwell with these, and lose 

Convention,^ since to look on noble forms 

Makes noble thro' the sensuous organism 

That which is higher. O hf t your natures up ; 

Embrace our aims ; work out your freedom. Girls, 

Knowledge is now no more a fountain seal'd ; 

Drink deep, until the habits of the slave, 

The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite 

And slander, die. Better not be at all 

Than not be noble. Leave us ; you may go. 80 

To-day the Lady Psyche will harangue 

The fresh arrivals of the week before ; 

For they press in from all the provinces. 

And fill the hive." 

She spoke, and bowing wav'd 
Dismissal. Back again we crost the court 
To Lady Psyche's. As we enter'd in. 
There sat along the forms, like morning doves 
That sun their milky bosoms on the thatch, 
A patient range of pupils ; she herself 

Erect behind a desk of satinwood,^ 90 

A quick brunette, well molded, falcon-eyed, ^ 
And on the hither side,^ or so she look'd. 
Of twenty summers. At her left, a child. 
In shining draperies, headed like a star,^ 
Her maiden babe, a double April old, 

shared their toils. Conquered at last by the Emperor Aurelian, she was 
shackled with gold and led in the emperor's triumph along the Sacred Way. 

1 Daughter of the Emperor Augustus and wife of Germanicus. She was 
gifted with a noble mind and character. 

2 See Note 4, p. 22. 

3 The wood of an Indian tree, which takes a high polish. 
* " On the hither side," i.e., less than. 

5 " Headed like a star," i.e., with shining golden hair. 



CAiNTO II.] A MEDLEY. 4 1 

Aglaia 1 slept. We sat ; the Lady glanc'd ; 

Then Florian, but no hveher than the dame 

That whisper'd "Asses' ears" among the sedge i^ 

" My sister." " Comely, too, by all that's fair," 

Said Cyril. " O hush, hush! " and she began: 100 

" This world was once a fluid haze of hght,^ 
Till toward the center set the starry tides, 
And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast 
The planets ; then the monster, then the man, 
Tattoo'd or woaded,* winter-clad in skins. 
Raw from the prime, and crushing down his mate;^ 
As yet we find in barbarous isles, and here 
Among the lowest." 

Thereupon she took 
A bird's-eye view of all the ungracious past ; 
Glanc'd at the legendary Amazon^ no 

As emblematic of a nobler age ; 
Apprais'd the Lycian custom;^ spoke of those 

1 A Greek word meaning beauty, brightness. It was the name of one of 
the Graces. 

2 The Phrygian king, Midas, told the secret of the changing of his ears 
(because of Apollo's anger at his decision in a trial of musical skill) to his 
wife. She, unable to hold the secret, told it to the waters of a marsh, and 
the growing sedges whispered it to the world (see Chaucer's Wife of Bath's 
Tale, and Ovid's Metamorphoses). 

3 This is the theory of the origin of the world knoAvn as the Nebular Hy- 
pothesis. 

* Dyed with the blue of the woad plant, with which the ancient Britons 
stained their bodies. 

5 " Raw from the prime," etc., i.e., raw from the beginning, and knock- 
ing down his mate in order to gain her in marriage. 

6 According to Greek story the Amazons were a race of women who lived 
to the north of the Black Sea, and gave themselves to war and the chase. 

'^ " Apprais'd," etc., i.e., praised the custom of the Lycians, who took the 
name from the mother and not from the father, and, when asked to give an 
account of parentage, named mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, etc. 



42 THE PRINCESS: [canto ii. 

That lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo ;i 
Ran down the Persian, Grecian, Roman Hnes 
Gf empire,^ and the woman's state in each, 
How far from just ; till, warming with her theme, 
She fulmined ^ out her scorn of laws Salique * 
And little-footed China,^ touch'd on Mahomet ^ 



1 " Lay at wine with," etc., i.e., shared the banquet with lord and priest. 
Lar and Lucumo were titles of honor among the Etruscans. That women 
enjoyed freedom in public feasting is shown in the sculptures which remain 
to us. It was customary at their banquets for the guests to lie upon couches 
about the table. 

8 In ancient Persia women had little independence, and were looked upon 
as chattels. In Homeric Greece their independence was as marked as in the 
feudal times of Europe, but in later Greece they were secluded and deprived 
of every sort of social freedom. Thucydides said that woman was happiest 
who was least talked of. The very opposite conditions were in Rome ; e. g. , 
Agrippina, Cornelia, Hortensia, etc. 

In 1694 Master William Wotton wrote in his Reflections upon Ancient 
and Modern Learning, after the manner of his times : " When Learning first 
came up [at the beginning of the Renaissance], men fancied that every- 
thing could be done by it, and they were charm'd with the Eloquence of its 
Professors, who did not fail to set forth all its Advantages in the most engag- 
ing Dress. It was so very modish that the Fair Sex seemed to believe that 
Greek and Latin added to their Charms ; and Plato and Aristotle, untranslated, 
were frequent Ornaments of their Closets. One would think by the Effects 
that it was a proper Way of Educating them, since there are no Accounts in 
History of so many truly great Women in any one Age as are to be found 
between the Years MD. and MDC." 

3 Fulminated ; uttered in a vehement manner. 

4 The Salic law excluded women from inheriting certain lands. The code 
of which it is a part is supposed to have originated with the Salian Franks 
(Teutons) in the fourth or fifth century. Its discrimination against woman 
proprietorship preserved the phrase " Salic law" to modern times. In the 
fourteenth century women were by its application excluded from the throne 
of France. 

5 Women of the upper classes in China have their feet deformed in early 
years by tight bandaging. 

6 The founder of Mohammedanism, who denied that women had souls, 
upheld polygamy, and permitted divorce at the will of the husband. 



CANTO II.] A MEDLEY. 43 

With much contempt, and came to chivahy,i 

When some respect, however sHght, was paid 120 

To woman, superstition all awry. 

However, then commenc'd the dawn ; a beam 

Had slanted forward, falling in a land 

Of promise ; fruit would follow. Deep, indeed, 

Their debt of thanks to her who first had dar'd 

To leap the rotten pales of prejudice, 

Disyoke their necks from custom, and assert 

None lordlier than themselves but that which made 

Woman and man. She had founded ; th^y must build. 

Here might they learn whatever men were taught ; 130 

Let them not fear. Some said their heads were less ; 

Some men's were small ; not they the least of men ; 

For often fineness compensated size. 

Besides, the brain was like the hand, and grew 

With using ; thence the man's, if more was more ; 

He took advantage of his strength to be 

First in the field ; some ages had been lost ; 

But woman ripen'd earlier, and her life 

Was longer ; and albeit their glorious names 

Were fewer, scatter'd stars, yet since in truth 140 

The highest is the measure of the man, 

And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay, 

Nor those horn-handed breakers of the glebe, 

But Homer, Plato, Verulam;^ even so 

With woman ; and in arts of government 

1 The system of military and social privileges which prevailed in Europe 
during the middle ages. By inculcating an ideal standard of action for men, 
— courtesy, generosity, valor, and honor, and a defense of the weak and op- 
pressed by the strong, — chivalry raised the estimate of women, as well as the 
manners of men. 

2 Homer, the chief of epic poets; Plato (born 427 B.C.), the greatest of 
philosophers; Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam (1561-1626), the leader in the 
reformation of modern science. The speaker takes these three as represent- 
ative of the wise in ancient and modern times. 



44 THE PRINCESS: [canto ii. 

Elizabeth i and others ;- arts of war, 

The peasant Joan^ and others;^ arts of grace, 

Sappho ^ and others ^ vied with any man : 

And, last not least, she who had left her place, 

And bow'd her state to them, that they might grow 150 

To use and power on this oasis, lapt '^ 

In the arms of leisure, sacred from the bhght 

Of ancient influence and scorn. 

At last 
She rose upon a wind of prophecy 
Dilating on the future :, " Everywhere 
Two heads in council, two beside the hearth, 
Two in the tangled business of the world, 
Two in the liberal offices of life. 
Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss 
Of science and the secrets of the mind ; 160 

Musician, painter, sculptor, critic, more ; 
And everywhere the broad and bounteous earth 
Should bear a double growth of those rare souls, 
Poets, whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world." 

She ended here, and beckon'd us ; the rest 
Parted;^ and, glowing full-faced welcome, she 

1 Queen of England from 1558 to 1603, and central figure in the great in- 
tellectual and material energy and preeminence of England at that time. 

2 Semiramis, Dido, Catherine de' Medici, Catherine II. of Russia, Maria 
Theresa of Austria, etc. 

3 Joan of Arc, a French peasant girl who, while tending sheep, con- 
ceived the notion of ridding her country of the English army of the Hundred 
Years' War. She led the French to victory, and crowned Charles VII. King 
of France in 1429. 

4 Artemisia, Zenobia, Boadicea, and Mary Ambree and the Maid of Sara- 
gossa, who are celebrated by poets. 

» This poet of Greece, and one of the greatest of the world, lived in the sixth 
century B.C. Fragments which still exist attest the splendor of her genius. 

^ Erinna, Corinna, Myrto, Margaret of Navarre, Vittoria Colonna, Renee 
of Ferrara, Olympia Morata, etc. "^ Infolded. ^ Departed. 



CANTO II.] A MEDLEY. 45 

Began to address us, and was moving on 

In gratulation, till as when a boat 

Tacks, and the slacken'd sail flaps, all her voice 

Faltering and fluttering in her throat, she cried: 170 

" My brother! " " Well, my sister." " O," she said, 

" What do you here? and in this dress ? — and these ? 

Why, who are these ? A wolf within the fold ! 

A pack of wolves! the Lord be gracious to me! 

A plot, a plot, a plot, to ruin all! " 

" No plot, no plot," he answer'd. " Wretched boy, 

How saw you not the inscription on the gate, 

Let no man enter in on pain of death ? " 

" And if I had," he answer'd, " who could think 

The softer Adams of your Academe,^ 18 j 

O sister, sirens ^ tho' they be, were such 

As chanted on the blanching bones of men? " 

" But you will find it otherwise," she said. 

** You jest ; ill jesting with edge-tools! My vow 

Binds me to speak, and O that iron will, 

That axlike edge unturnable, our Head, 

The Princess." " Well then, Psyche, take my life. 

And nail me like a weasel on a grange 

For warning ;3 bury me beside the gate, 

And cut this epitaph above my bones: 190 

* Here lies a brother by a sister slain. 

All for the common good of womankind.' " 

" Let me die too," said Cyril, " having seen 

And heard the Lady Psyche." 

I struck in : 
" Albeit so mask'd, madam, I love the truth. 

1 Academy ; the grove and gymnasium near Athens where Plato taught. 
The paradisical nature of the place is suggested by the word " Adams." 

2 Sea nymphs of Greek legend who fascinated those who came within 
hearing of their singing, and then destroyed them. 

3 Refers to the hanging of weasels and mice upon a granary as a warning 
of the same fate to like filchers. 



46 THE PRINCESS: [canto ii. 

Receive it ; and in me behold the Prince 

Your countryman, affianc'd years ago 

To the Lady Ida. Here, for here she was, 

And thus (what other way was left?) I came." 

" O sir, O Prince, I have no country — none ; 200 

If any, this ; but none. Whate'er I was 

Disrooted, what I am is grafted here. 

Affianc'd, sir? love-whispers may not breathe 

Within this vestal 1 Hmit, and how should I, 

Who am not mine, say live ? The thunderbolt 

Hangs silent ; but prepare : I speak ; it falls." 

" Yet pause," I said : ** for that inscription there, 

I think no more of deadly lurks therein 

Than in a clapper clapping in a garth,^ 

To scare the fowl from fruit ; if more there be, 210 

If more and acted on, what follows? War ; 

Your own work marr'd ; for this your Academe, 

Whichever side be victor, in the halloo 

Will topple to the trumpet down, and pass 

With all fair theories only made to gild 

A stormless summer." '* Let the Princess judge 

Of that," she said; ** farewell, sir— and to you. 

I shudder at the sequel, but I go." 

"Are you that Lady Psyche," I rejoin'd, 
"The fifth in line from that old Florian, 220 

Yet hangs his portrait in my father's hall 
(The gaunt old baron with his beetle ^ brow 
Sun-shaded in the heat of dusty fights) 
As he bestrode * my grandsire, when he fell. 
And all else fled. We point to it, and we say, 

1 A word derived from the name Vesta, the Roman goddess of the sacred 
fire and hearth. Vestals were maidens of spotless life, who served the goddess. 

2 " A clapper," etc., i.e., a windmill clapping in a garden. 

3 Prominent or overhanging. * In order to defend. 



CANTO II.] A MEDLEY. 47 

' The loyal warmth of Florian is not cold, 

But branches current yet in kindred veins.' " 

"Are you that Psyche," Florian added; ''she 

With whom I sang about the morning hills, 

Flung ball, flew kite, and rac'd the purple fly, 230 

And snar'd the squirrel of the glen? Are you 

That Psyche, wont to bind my throbbing brow, 

To smooth my pillow, mix the foariiing draught 

Of fever, tell me pleasant tales, and read 

My sickness down to happy dreams? Are you 

That brother-sister Psyche, both in one ? 

You were that Psyche, but what are you now? " 

" You are that Psyche," Cyril said, " for whom 

I would be that forever which I seem, 

Woman, if I might sit beside your feet, 240 

And glean your scatter'd sapience." 

Then once more, 
"Are you that Lady Psyche," I began, 
" That on her bridal morn, before she past 
From all her old companions, when the king 
Kiss'd her pale cheek, declar'd that ancient ties 
Would still be dear beyond the southern hills ; 
That were there any of our people there 
In want or peril, there was one to hear 
And help them? Look! for such are these and I." 
"Are you that Psyche," Florian ask'd, "to whom, 250 

In gentler days, your arrow-wounded fawn 
Came flying while you sat beside the well? 
The creature laid his muzzle on your lap. 
And sobb'd, and you sobb'd with it, and the blood 
Was sprinkled on your kirtle,i and you wept. 
That was fawn's blood, not brother's, yet you wept. 
O by the bright head of my httle niece. 
You were that Psyche, and what are you now? " 
1 Petticoat. 



48 THE PRINCESS: [canto 11. 

" You are that Psyche," Cyril said again, 

" The mother of the sweetest Httle maid 260 

That ever crow'd for kisses." 

" Out upon it!" 
She answer'd ; " peace ! and why should I not play 
The Spartan mother ^ with emotion, be 
The Lucius Junius Brutus ^ of my kind? 
Him you call great. He for the common weal, 
The fading politics of mortal Rome, 
As I might slay this child, if good need were. 
Slew both his sons. And I, shall I, on whom 
The secular^ emancipation turns 

Of half this world,^ be swerv'd from right to save 270 

A prince, a brother? A little will I yield. 
Best so, perchance, for us, and well for you. 
O hard, when love and duty clash ! I fear 
My conscience will not count me fleckless;^ yet — 
Hear my conditions : promise (otherwise 
You perish) as you came, to slip away 
To-day, — to-morrow, — soon. It shall be said, 
' These women were too barbarous, would not learn ; 
They fled, who might have sham'd us.' Promise, all." 

What could we else? we promis'd each ; and she, 280 

Like some wild creature newly cag'd, commenc'd 
A to-and-fro, so pacing till she paus'd 
By Florian, holding out her lily arms 
Took both his hands, and smiling faintly said : 

1 In the teaching of ancient Sparta all existed for the state, and private 
feeling must be subordinate to public good. Anecdotes are common which 
show the devotion of mothers to this system. 

2 A consul of early Rome, who, having detected his two sons in a plot 
against the republic, condemned them to death. 

3 Means here, living for ages ; permanent. 
^ " Of half this world," i.e., of women. 

5 Blameless ; innocent. 



CANTO II.] A MEDLEY. 49 

" I knew you at the first ; tho' you have grown 
You scarce have alter'd. I am sad and glad 
To see you, Florian. /give thee to death, 
My brother! it was duty spoke, not 1= 
My needful seeming harshness, pardon it. 
Our mother, is she well?" 

With that she kiss'd 290 

His forehead, then, a moment after, clung 
About him, and betwixt them blossom'd up 
From out a common vein of memory 
Sweet household talk, and phrases of the hearth, 
And far allusion, till the gracious dews ^ 
Began to glisten and to fall ; and while 
They stood so rapt, we gazing, came a voice : 
" I brought a message here from Lady Blanche." 
Back started she, and turning round we saw 
The Lady Blanche's daughter where she stood, 300 

Melissa, with her hand upon the lock, 
A rosy blonde, and in a college gown. 
That clad her like an April daffodilly 
(Her mother's color 2), with her Hps apart, 
And all her thoughts as fair ^ within her eyes 
As bottom agates seen to wave and float 
In crystal currents of clear morning seas. 

So stood that same fair creature at the door. 
Then Lady Psyche: '''Ah — Mehssa— you! 

You heard us? " And Mehssa: "O pardon me! 310 

I heard, I could not help it, did not wish ; 
But, dearest Lady, pray you fear me not, 
Nor think I bear that heart within my breast. 
To give three gallant gentlemen to death." 

1 Tears. 2 The color worn by the students of Lady Blanche. 

3 Clear; distinct. 

4 



50 THE PRINCESS: [canto ii. 

" I trust you," said the other, '' for we two 

Were always friends, none closer, elm and vine ; 

But yet your mother's jealous temperament — 

Let not your prudence, dearest, drowse, or prove 

The Danaid ^ of a leaky vase, for fear 

This whole foundation ruin,2 and I lose 320 

My honor, these their lives." " Ah, fear me not," 

Rephed Melissa; "no — I would not tell, 

No, not for all Aspasia's ^ cleverness ; 

No, not to answer, madam, all those hard things 

That Sheba* came to ask of Solomon." 

" Be it so," the other, " that we still may lead 

The new light up, and culminate in peace ; 

For Solomon may come to Sheba yet." 

Said Cyril : " Madam, he the wisest man 

Feasted the woman wisest then, in halls 330 

Of Lebanonian ^ cedar ; nor should you, 

(Tho', madam, you should answer, we would ask,) 

Less welcome find among us, if you came 

Among us, debtors for our lives to you, 

Myself for something more." He said not what, 

But " Thanks," she answer'd. " Go ; we have been too long 

Together. Keep your hoods about the face ; 

They do so that affect abstraction here. 

Speak little ; mix not with the rest ; and hold 

Your promise ; all, I trust, may yet be well." 340 

1 The fifty Danaides, or Danaids, daughters of Danaus, King of Argos, 
who, in Greek mythology, married the fifty sons of ^gyptus, King of Egypt, 
and who (all but one) killed their husbands on their wedding night, were con- 
demned to carry water in sieves forever. 

2 '' This whole foundation ruin," i.e., the whole college fall to ruin. 

3 A woman of strong intellect and personality, who exercised a consider- 
able influence in Athens during the age of Pericles. 

* For an account of the Queen of Sheba's visit to Solomon, see i Kings x. 

5 From Mount Lebanon in Palestine. 



CANTO II.] A MEDLEY. 51 

We turn'd to go, but Cyril took the child, 
And held her round the knees against his waist, 
And blew the swoll'n cheek of a trumpeter, 
While Psyche watch'd them, smiling, and the child 
Push'd her flat hand against his face and laugh'd ; 
And thus our conference clos'd. 

And then we stroll'd 
For half the day thro' stately theaters 
Bench'd cfescentwise. In each we sat, we heard 
The grave professor. On the lecture slate 

The circle rounded under female hands 350 

With flawless demonstration. Follow'd then 
A classic lecture, rich in sentiment. 
With scraps of thunderous epic lilted out ^ 
By violet-hooded doctors, elegies 
And quoted odes, and jewels ^ five words long 
That on the stretch'd forefinger of all Time 
Sparkle forever. Then we dipt in all 
That treats of whatsoever is, — the state. 
The total chronicles of man, the mind, 

The morals, something of the frame,^ the rock, 360 

The star, the bird, the fish, the shell, the flower, 
Electric, chemic laws, and all the rest. 
And whatsoever can be taught and known ; 
Till like three horses that have broken fence, 
And glutted all night long breast-deep in com, 
We issued gorg'd with knowledge, and I spoke : 
" Why, sirs, they do all this as well as we." 
"They hunt old trails," said Cyril, "very well; 
But when did woman ever yet invent ? " ^ 

1 " Lilted out," i.e., uttered in a sprightly, animated, tripping manner. 

2 Means here, sayings, aphorisms, precepts, proverbs, — wisdom which 
Time holds as a gem on his hand. 

3 The human frame. 

* Having by convention been debarred from instruction and from the 



52 THE PRINCESS: [canto ii. 

" Ungracious! " answer'd Florian; "have you learnt 370 

No more from Psyche's lecture, you that talk'd 

The trash that made me sick, and almost sad ? " 

" O trash," he said, " but with a kernel in it. 

Should I not call her wise who made me wise ? 

And learnt? I learnt more from her in a flash 

Than if my brainpan were an empty hull, 

And every Muse tumbled a science in. 

A thousand hearts lie fallow in these halls, 

And round these halls a thousand baby loves 

Fly, twanging headless arrows at the hearts, 380 

Whence follows many a vacant pang ; but O 

With me, sir, enter'd in the bigger boy,i 

The head of all the golden-shafted firm, 

The long-hmb'd lad that had a Psyche too ; 

He cleft me thro' the stomacher ;2 and now 

What think you of it, Florian? do I chase 

The substance or the shadow? will it hold? 

I have no sorcerer's malison ^ on me. 

No ghostly hauntings Hke his Highness. I 

Flatter myself that always everywhere 390 

I know the substance when I see it. Well, 

Are castles* shadows? Three of them? Is she. 

The sweet proprietress, a shadow? If not, 

Shall those three castles patch my tatter'd coat? 

For dear are those three castles to my wants, 

And dear is sister Psyche to my heart. 

And two dear things are one of double worth ; 

freedom necessary to develop their originating and inventive faculties, and 
never having created a great school in literature or art, women, even with 
instruction and untrammeled conditions, never will, — is Cyril's position. 

1 Eros, or Cupid, who cast golden arrows. In mythology, Psyche, theper-l 
sonified soul, a fair girl with the wings of a butterfly, was beloved of Eros. 

2 Used here for the woman's bodice which Cyril was wearing. 
5 Curse. * See Canto I. line 78. 



CANTO II.] A MEDLEY. 53 

And much I might have said, but that my zone 

Unmann'd me. Then the doctors! O to hear 

The doctors! O to watch the thirsty plants 400 

Imbibing! Once or twice I thought to roar, 

To break my chain, to shake my mane ; — but thou 

Modulate me, soul of mincing mimicry ! 

Make liquid treble of that bassoon, my throat ; 

Abase those eyes that ever lov'd to meet 

Star-sisters answering under crescent brows ; 

Abate the stride which speaks of man, and loose 

A flying charm of blushes o'er this cheek. 

Where they, like swallows coming out of time. 

Will wonder why they came. — But hark, the bell 410 

For dinner ; let us go ! " 

And in we stream'd 
Among the columns, pacing staid and still 
By twos and threes, till all from end to end. 
With beauties every shade of brown and fair, 
In colors gayer than the morning mist, 
The long hall glitter'd like a bed of flowers.^ 
How might a man not wander from his wits 
Pierc'd thro' with eyes, but that I kept mine own 
Intent on her who, rapt in glorious dreams. 

The second sight of some Astraean^ age, 420 

Sat compass'd with professors ; they, the while, 
Discuss'd a doubt and tost it to and fro ; 
A clamor thicken'd, mixt with inmost terms 

1 Tennyson says, in a letter to Mr. Rolfe : " Lady Psyche's ' side' (that 
is a Cambridge equivalent of * pupils ') wore lilac robes, and Lady Blanche's, 
robes of daffodil color. These two made the long hall glitter ' like a bed of 
flowers.' " 

2 " The second sight," etc., i.e., the prophetic sight of a golden age. 
Astrsea, daughter of Zeus and the goddess of justice, lived among men dur- 
ing the golden age, and was the last of the divinities to leave the earth in the 
iron age. She would be the first to return, it was said, when time should 
bring back the age of gold. 



54 THE PRINCESS: [canto ii. 

Of art and science. Lady Blanche alone, 
Of faded form and haughtiest lineaments, 
With all her autumn tresses falsely brown. 
Shot sidelong daggers at us, a tiger cat 
In act to spring. 

At last a solemn grace 
Concluded, and we sought the gardens. There 
One walk'd reciting by herself, and one 430 

In this hand held a volume as to read. 
And smooth'd a petted peacock down with that ; 
Some to a low song oar'd a shallop by. 
Or under arches of the marble bridge 
Hung, shadow'd from the heat; some hid and sought 
In the orange thickets ; others tost a ball 
Above the fountain jets, and back again 
With laughter ; others lay about the lawns, 
Of the older sort, and murmur'd that their May 
Was passing; what was learning unto them? 440 

They wish'd to marry ; they could rule a house ; 
Men hated learned women. But we three 
Sat muffled like the Fates ; ^ and often came 
Melissa, hitting all we saw with shafts 
Of gentle satire, kin to charity. 

That harm'd not. Then day droopt ; the chapel bells 
Call'd us. We left the walks ; we mixt with those 
Six hundred maidens clad in purest white,^ 
Before two streams of hght from wall to wall. 
While the great organ almost burst his pipes, 450 

Groaning for power, and rolling thro' the court 
A long melodious thunder to the sound 

1 The three divinities who, in classic mythology, presided over the birth, 
life, and death of mortals. 

2 From the letter quoted in Note I, p. 53 : " They were in white at chapel, 
as we Cantabs were at our Trinity College chapel in Cambridge." " Can- 
tabs " is an abbreviated form of " Cantabrigians " (students at Cambridge). 



CANTO III.] A MEDLEY. 55 

Of solemn psalms and silver litanies, 

The work of Ida, to call down from heaven 

A blessing on her labors for the world. 



Sweet and low, sweet and low, 

Wind of the western sea. 
Low, low, breathe and blow, 

Wind of the western sea! 
Over the rolling waters go, 
Come from the dying moon, and blow, 

Blow him again to me ; 
While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. 

Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, 

Father will come to thee soon ; 
Rest, rest, on mother's breast, 

Father will come to thee soon ; 
Father will come to his babe in the nest. 
Silver sails all out of the west 

Under the silver moon ; 
Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep. 1 



CANTO III. 

Morn, in the white wake of the morning star. 
Came furrowing all the orient into gold. 
We rose, and each by other drest with care, 
Descended to the court, that lay three parts 
In shadow ; but the Muses' heads ^ were touch'd 
Above the darkness from their native East. 

There while we stood beside the fount, and watch'd 
Or seem'd to watch the dancing bubble, approach'd 
Melissa, ting'd with wan ^ from lack of sleep, 

1 See Introduction, p. 14. 2 gee Canto II. line 13. 

3 Pallor ; an adjective used as a noun. 



56 THE PRINCESS: [canto hi. 

Or grief, and glowing round her dewy eyes lo 

The circled Iris ^ of a night of tears. 

And " Fly," she cried, " O fly, while yet you may! 

My mother knows." And when 1 ask'd her " How? " 

" My fault," she wept, " my fault! and yet not mine ; 

Yet mine in part. O hear me, pardon me! 

My mother, 'tis her wont from night to night 

To rail at Lady Psyche and her side. 

She says the Princess should have been the Head, 

Herself and Lady Psyche the two arms ; 

And so it was agreed when first they came; 20 

But Lady Psyche was the right hand now, 

And she the left, or not or seldom used ; 

Hers more than half the students, all the love. 

And so last night she fell to canvass you : 

Her countrywomen ! she did not envy her. 

'Who ever saw such wild barbarians? 

Girls ! — more like men! ' and at these words the snake. 

My secret, seem'd to stir within my breast ; 

And oh, sirs, could I help it, but my cheek 

Began to burn and burn, and her lynx eye 30 

To fix and make me hotter, till she laugh'd : 

* O marvelously modest maiden, you ! 

Men! girls, like men! why, if they had been men 

You need not set your thoughts in rubric ^ thus 

For wholesale comment.' Pardon, I am sham'd 

That I must needs repeat for my excuse 

What looks so little graceful. ' Men ' (for still 

My mother went revolving on the word), 

'And so they are, — very like men indeed, — 

1 Iris, in Greek mythology, was the goddess of the rainbow, a beautiful 
maiden especially attached to Hera or Juno. The word is used here for the 
band of color round the eyes after sleeplessness and tears. 

2 Red. In old manuscripts and books, comments, injunctions, directions, 
etc., were often put in red characters. Melissa's blushes are here meant. 



CAxNTO III.] A MEDLEY. 57 

And with that woman closeted for hours ! ' 40 

Then came these dreadful words out one by one : 

' Why — these — are — men ! ' I shudder'd ; ' and you know it ! ' 

' O, ask me nothing,' I said. ' And she knows too, 

And she conceals it.' So my mother clutch'd 

The truth at once, but with no word from me ; 

And now thus early risen she goes to inform 

The Princess. Lady Psyche will be crush'd; 

But you may yet be sav'd, and therefore fly ; 

But heal me with your pardon ere you go." 

"What pardon,! sweet Melissa, for a blush? " 50 

Said Cyril ; " Pale one, blush again. Than wear 
Those lilies, better blush our lives away. 
Yet let us breathe for one hour more in heaven," 
He added, '' lest some classic angel 2 speak 
In scorn of us, ' They mounted, Ganymedes,^ 
To tumble, Vulcans,* on the second morn.' 
But I will melt this marble ^ into wax 
To yield us farther furlough;" and he went. 

MeHssa shook her doubtful curls, and thought 
He scarce would prosper. " Tell us," Florian ask'd, 60 

" How grew this feud betwixt the right and left." 
" O, long ago," she said, "betwixt these two 
Division smolders hidden ; 'tis my mother. 
Too jealous, often fretful as the wind 

1 Supply " is necessary." 

2 " Some classic angel," i.e., some member of the college learned in the 
classics. 

3 Ganymede was a beautiful Trojan youth who was carried to heaven to 
be cupbearer to Zeus. 

* Vulcan was cast from heaven and fell to the earth (see Pope's Homer's 
Iliad, Book I. lines 760-765, and Milton's Paradise Lost, Book I. lines 
740-746). 

5 Lady Blanche's set purpose. 



58 THE PRINCESS: [canto hi. 

Pent in a crevice ; much I bear with her. 

I never knew my father, but she says 

(God help her! ) she was wedded to a fool ; 

And still she rail'd against the state of things. 

She had the care of Lady Ida's youth, 

And from the Queen's decease she brought her up. 70 

But when your sister came she won the heart 

Of Ida. They were still together,— grew 

(For so they said themselves) inosculated ; ^ 

Consonant chords that shiver to one note; 2 

One mind in all things. Yet my mother still 

Affirms your Psyche thiev'd her theories. 

And angled with them for her pupils' love. 

She calls her plagiarist, — I know not what. 

But I must go, I dare not tarry," and hght 

As flies the shadow of a bird, she fled. 80 

Then murmur'd Florian, gazing after her, 
" An open-hearted maiden, true and pure. 
If I could love, why this were she. How pretty 
Her blushing was, and how she blush'd again, 
As if to close with Cyril's random wish! 
Not hke your Princess cramm'd with erring pride, 
Nor like poor Psyche whom she drags in tow." 

" The crane," I said, " may chatter of the crane, 
The dove may murmur of the dove, but I, 

An eagle, clang an eagle to the sphere.^ 90 

My princess, O my princess! true, she errs, 
But in her own grand way. Being herself 

1 Blended in one ; united. 

2 Like chords in instruments of the same kind when placed near each 
other, the one vibrating when the corresponding chord in the other is struck. 

3 " To the sphere," i.e., to the upper air. There is a comparison similar 
to these three lines in Theocritus, Idyll IX. line 31. 



CANTO III.] A MEDLEY, 59 

Three times more noble than three score of men, 

She sees herself in every woman else, 

And so she wears her error like a crown 

To blind the truth and me. For her, and her, 

Hebes ^ are they to hand ambrosia, mix 

The nectar; but — ah, she — whene'er she moves 

The Samian Here 2 rises, and she speaks 

A Memnon smitten with the morning sun."^ 100 

So saying, from the court we pac'd, and gain'd 
The terrace rang'd along the northern front. 
And leaning there on those balusters, high 
Above the empurpled champaign, drank the gale 
That, blown about the foliage underneath. 
And sated with the innumerable rose, 
Beat balm upon our eyehds. Hither came 
Cyril, and yawning, " O hard task," he cried ; 
" No fighting shadows* here! I forc'd a way 
Thro' solid opposition crabb'd and gnarl'd. no 

Better to clear prime ^ forests, heave and thump 
A league of street in summer solstice down. 
Than hammer at this reverend gentlewoman. 
I knock'd and, bidden, enter'd ; found her there 
At point to move,^ and settled in her eyes 
The green, malignant light of coming storm. 
Sir, I was courteous, every phrase well-oil'd 
As man's could be ; yet maiden-meek I pray'd 
Concealment. She demanded who we were, 

1 Hebe was the goddess of youth and spring, who handed about cups to 
the gods till Ganymede was borne to heaven. 

2 Hera or Juno, queen of heaven, had especial love for the island of 
Samos. 

3 The colossal statue of Memnon, son of the dawn, at Thebes in Egypt, 
gave out musical sound when touched with the morning sunbeams. 

* Referring to the curse upon the royal family. 5 Primeval. 

^ "At point to move," i.e., about to leave her room. 



6o THE PRINCESS: [canto hi. 

And why we came. I fabled nothing fair,i 120 

But, your example pilot, told her all. 

Up went the hush'd amaze of hand and eye. 

But when I dwelt upon your old affiance. 

She answer'd sharply that I talk'd astray. 

I urg'd the fierce inscription on the gate. 

And our three lives. True — we had hm'd 2 ourselves 

With open eyes, and we must take the chance. 

But such extremes, I told her, well might harm 

The woman's cause. ' Not more than now,' she said, 

'So puddled^ as it is with favoritism.' 130 

I tried the mother's heart : shame might befall 

Melissa, knowing, saying not she knew. 

Her answer was, ' Leave me to deal with that.' 

I spoke of war to come and many deaths. 

And she repHed, her duty was to speak, 

And duty, duty, clear of consequences. 

I grew discourag'd, sir ; but since I knew 

No rock so hard but that a little wave 

May beat admission in a thousand years, 

I recommenc'd : ' Decide not ere you pause. 140 

I find you here but in the second place. 

Some say the. third, — the authentic foundress you. 

I offer boldly : we will seat you highest. 

Wink at our advent, help my Prince to gain 

His rightful bride, and here I promise you 

Some palace in our land, where you shall reign 

The head and heart of all our fair she-world,* 

And your great name flow on with broadening time 

Forever.' Well, she balanc'd this a little. 

And told me she would answer us to-day, 150 

Meantime be mute ; thus much, nor more, I gain'd." 

1 " Fabled nothing fair," i.e., made no fine fable or story. 

2 Entangled ; insnared, as birds with viscous substance. 

3 Made muddy or foul. 4 See Note 2, p. 23. 



CANTO III.] A MEDLEY. 6i 

He ceasing, came a message from the Head : 
That afternoon the Princess rode to take 
The dip ^ of certain strata to the north. 
Would we go with her? We should find the land 
Worth seeing, and the river made a fall 
Out yonder ; then she pointed on to where 
A double hill ran up his furrowy forks 
Beyond the thick-leaved platans ^ of the vale. 

Agreed to, this, the day fled on thro' all i6o 

Its range of duties to the appointed hour. 
Then summon'd to the porch we went. She stood 
Among her maidens, higher by the head. 
Her back against a pillar, her foot on one 
Of those tame leopards. Kittenhke he roll'd 
And paw'd about her sandal. I drew near ; 
I gaz'd. On a sudden my strange seizure came 
Upon me, the weird vision of oui' house : 
The Princess Ida seem'd a hollow show, 

Her gay-furr'd cats a painted fantasy, 170 

Her college and her maidens empty masks, 
And I myself the shadow of a dream. 
For all things were and were not. Yet I felt 
My heart beat thick with passion and with awe ; 
Then from my breast the involuntary sigh 
Brake,^ as she smote me with the light of eyes 
That lent my knee desire to kneel, and shook 
My pulses, till to horse we got, and so 
Went forth in long retinue following up 
The river as it narrow'd to the hills. 180 

I rode beside her and to me she said : 
" O friend, we trust that you esteem'd us not 

1 The angle whicli the strata made with the horizontal plane. 

2 Plane trees. 3 Old form of " broke." 



62 THE PRINCESS: [canto hi. 

Too harsh to your companion yestermom ; 

UnwiUingly we spake." ^ " No — not to her," 

I answer'd, " but to one of whom we spake 

Your Highness might have seem'd the thing you say." 

"Again? " she cried; "are you ambassadresses 

From him to me? We give you, being strange, 

A hcense ; speak, and let the topic die." 

I stammer'd that I knew him — could have wish'd — 190 

" Our king expects— was there no precontract ? 
There is no truer-hearted — ah, you seem 
All he prefigur'd, and he could not see 
The bird of passage flying south but long'd 
To follow. Surely, if your Highness keep 
Your purport, you will shock him ev'n to death, 
Or baser courses, children of despair." 

" Poor boy," she said, " can he not read — no books? 
Quoit, tennis, ball — no games? nor deals in that 
Which men dehght in, martial exercise? 200 

To nurse a bHnd ideal like a girl, 
Methinks he seems no better than a girl. 
As girls were once, as we ourself ^ have been. 
We had our dreams ; perhaps he mixt with them. 
We touch on our dead self, nor shun to do it, 
Being other — since we learnt our meaning here. 
To lift the woman's fall'n divinity 
Upon an even pedestal with man." 

She paus'd, and added with a haughtier smile : 
"And as to precontracts, we move, my friend, 210 

At no man's beck, but know ourself and thee, 
O Vashti, noble Vashti!^ Summon'd out, 

1 Old form of " spoke." 

2 The royal style, which expressed the dignity of the Princess. 

3 See Esther i. 



CANTO HI.] A MEDLEY. 63 

She kept her state, and left the drunken king 
To brawl at Shushan underneath the palms." 

" Alas, your Highness breathes full east," ^ I said, 
" On that which leans to you. I know the Prince, 
I prize his truth ; and then how vast a work 
To assail this gray ^ preeminence of man ! 
You grant me license; might I use it? Think: 
Ere half be done perchance yoiu- hfe may fail; 220 

Then comes the feebler heiress of your plan, 
And takes and ruins all ; and thus your pains 
May only make that footprint upon sand 
Which old-recurring waves of prejudice 
Resmooth to nothing. Might I dread ^ that you, 
With only Fame for spouse, and your great deeds 
For issue, yet may live in vain, and miss. 
Meanwhile, what every woman counts her due, 
Love, children, happiness? " 

And she exclaim' d : 
" Peace, you young savage of the northern wild! 230 

What! tho' your Prince's love were like a god's, 
Have we not made ourself the sacrifice? 
You are bold indeed, — we are not talk'd to thus. 
Yet will we say for children, would they grew 
Like field flowers everywhere! we like them well. 
But children die ; and let me tell you, girl, 
Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot die ; 
They with the sun and moon renew their hght 
Forever, blessing those that look on them. 

Children, — that men may pluck them from our hearts, 240 

Kill us with pity, break us with ourselves,^ — 

1 " Breathes full east," i.e., is of the character of the east wind, chilling 
and blasting tender shoots. 

2 Hoary; ancient. 3 " Might I dread," i.e., may I dare to say. 
* " With ourselves," i.e., in our affection for our children. 



64 THE PRINCESS: . [canto hi. 

O — children — there is nothing upon earth 

More miserable than she that has a son 

And sees him err. Nor would we work for fame ; 

Tho' she perhaps might reap the applause of Great/ 

Who learns the one pou sto ^ whence after hands 

May move the world, tho' she herself effect 

But little. Wherefore up and act, nor shrink 

For fear our soHd aim be dissipated 

By frail successors. Would, indeed, we had been, 250 

In lieu of many mortal flies, a race 

Of giants, living each a thousand years. 

That we might see our own work out, and watch 

The sandy footprint harden into stone." 

I answer'd nothing, doubtful in myself 
If that strange poet-princess with her grand 
Imaginations might at all be won. 
And she broke out interpreting my thoughts : 

" No doubt we seem a kind of monster to you ; 
We are us'd to that ; for women, up till this 260 

Cramp'd under worse than South-sea-isle taboo,^ 
Dwarfs of the gynseceum,* fail so far 
In high desire, they know not — cannot guess 
How much their welfare is a passion to us. 
If we could give them surer, quicker proof — 
O if our end were less achievable 
By slow approaches than by single act 
Of immolation, any phase of death, 

1 Great discoverer, or great benefiter of mankind. 

2 " Pou sto," i.e., a place to stand on. " Give me," said Archimedes of 
Syracuse (287-212 B.C.), " where I may stand, and I will move the world." 

3 Restraint or exclusion ; among races of the South Pacific a system by 
which persons and things are placed under a ban or curse. 

^ Apartments in a Greek house set aside for the use of women. 



CANTO III.] A MEDLEY. 65 

We were as prompt to spring against the pikes, 

Or down the fiery gulf, as talk of it, 270 

To compass our dear sisters' liberties." 

She bow'd as if to veil a noble tear ; 
And up we came to where the river slop'd 
To plunge in cataract, shattering on black blocks 
A breadth of thunder. O'er it shook the woods. 
And danc'd the color,i and, below, stuck out 
The bones of some vast bulk that liv'd and roar'd 
Before man was. She gaz'd awhile and said, 
" As these rude bones to us, are we to her 

That will be." " Dare we dream of that," I ask'd, 280 

" Which wrought us, as the workman and his work, 
That practice betters? " ^ " How," she cried, ''you love 
The metaphysics! read and earn our prize, 
A golden brooch : beneath an emerald plane 
Sits Diotima, teaching him that died 
Of hemlock ;^ our device ; wrought to the life ; 
She rapt upon her subject, he on her ; 
For there are schools for all." " And yet," I said, 
" Methinks I have not found among them all 
One anatomic."* " Nay, we thought of that," 290 

She answer'd, "but it pleas'd us not. In truth 
We shudder but to dream our maids should ape 
Those monstrous males that carve the living hound, 

1 The woods shook in the stirring air, and the rainbow of the falling 
water danced. 

2 Is it not impious to dream that the Creator who made us will improve his 
work by practice? 

3 The brooch contains a plane tree made of emerald, under which Diotima, 
a wise woman of Mantinea, is teaching Socrates. " The father of ethical 
philosophy " was condemned to death after defending himself on a charge of 
corrupting the youth of Athens and teaching of new gods, and drank hem- 
lock at the command of the state in 399 B.C. 

4 Of anatomy. 

5 



66 THE PRINCESS: [canto hi. 

And cram him with the fragments of the grave ;i 

Or in the dark dissolving human heart, 

And holy secrets of this microcosm,^ 

Dabbling a shameless hand with shameful jest, 

Encarnalize ^ their spirits. Yet we know 

Knowledge is knowledge, and this matter hangs. 

Howbeit ourself, foreseeing casualty, 300 

Nor willing men should come among us, learnt, 

For many weary moons before we came. 

This craft of healing. Were you sick, ourself 

Would tend upon you. To your question now, 

Which touches on the workman and his work. 

Let there be Hght, and there was light :^ 'tis so; 

For was, and is, and will be, are but is ;^ 

And all creation is one act at once. 

The birth of Hght. But we that are not all, 

As parts, can see but parts, now this, now that, 310 

And live, perforce, from thought to thought, and make 

One act a phantom of succession. Thus 

Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow, Time ; 

But in the shadow will we work, and mold 

The woman to the fuller day." 

She spake 
With kindled eyes. We rode a league beyond. 
And, o'er a bridge of pine wood crossing, came 

1 The reference is to vivisection, and a rumor that dogs kept for such pur- 
pose were fed with fragments of dissected bodies. 

2 Little world ; applied to man as an epitome, physically and morally, of the 
great world. 

3 Make carnal; sensualize. * See Gen. i. 3. 

5 "She becomes really profound," says Dawson, "in her analysis of 
our notions of creation as stages of successive acts. Our minds, she teaches, 
are so constituted that we must of necessity apprehend everything in the 
form and aspect of successive time ; but in the Almighty fiat, ' Let there 
be light, ' the whole of the complex potentialities of the universe were in fact 
hidden." 



CANTO III.] A MEDLEY. 67 

On flowery levels underneath the crag, 

Full of all beauty. " O how sweet," I said 

(For I was half oblivious of my mask), 320 

" To linger here with one that lov'd us." " Yea," 

She answer'd, " or with fair philosophies 

That lift the fancy ; for indeed these fields 

Are lovely. Lovelier not the Elysian lawns,i 

Where pac'd the demigods 2 of old, and saw 

The soft white vapor streak the crowned towers 

Built to the sun ;"3 then, turning to her maids, 

" Pitch our pavilion here upon the sward ; 

Lay out the viands." At the word, they rais'd 

A tent of satin, elaborately wrought 330 

With fair Corinna's * triumph ; here she stood, 

Engirt with many a florid maiden cheek, 

The woman conqueror ; woman-conquer'd there 

The bearded victor of ten thousand hymns, 

And all the men mourn'd at his side. But we 

Set forth to climb ; then, climbing, Cyril kept 

With Psyche, with Melissa Florian, I 

With mine affianc'd. Many a little hand 

Glanc'd like a touch of sunshine on the rocks, 

Many a hght foot shone like a jewel set 340 

In the dark crag. And then we turn'd, we wound 

About the cliffs, the copses, out and in, 

Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names 

Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff, 

1 " Elysian lawns," i.e., lawns of Elysium, the abode of the blessed after 
death. 

2 Demigods were men who partook of divine nature either by descent from 
an immortal, or by gift of virtues. 

3 " Built to the sun," i.e., rising toward the sun; lofty. 

* Corinna, a Grecian poetess, is said to have won five prizes over the 
great Pindar (522-443 B.C.). He was " the bearded victor of ten thousand 
hymns," many of which have come down to us. 



I 



68 THE PRINCESS: [canto iv. 

Amygdaloid and trachyte,^ till the sun 

Grew broader toward his death, and fell, and all 

The rosy heights came out above the lawns. 



The splendor falls on castle walls 

And snowy summits old in story ; 
The long light shakes across the lakes, 
And the wild cataract leaps in glory. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying; 
Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear. 

And thinner, clearer, farther going! 
O sweet and far from cliff and scar 
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! 
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying; 
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

O love, they die in yon rich sky. 

They faint on hill or field or river ; 
Our echoes roll from soul to soul. 
And grow forever and forever. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying. 
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.2 



CANTO IV. 

" There sinks the nebulous star we call the sun,^ 
If that hypothesis of theirs be sound," 
Said Ida; ''let us down and rest;" and we, 
Down from the lean and wrinkled precipices, 
By every coppice-feather'd chasm and cleft, 
Dropt thro' the ambrosial gloom to where below, 
No bigger than a glowworm, shone the tent, 
Lamp-lit from the inner. Once she leah'd on me, 

1 These names are of rocks of various natures and structures, and are used 
here in amused and playful irony. 

2 See Introduction, p. 14. 3 See Canto II. lines 101-104. 



CANTO IV.] A MEDLEY. 69 

Descending ; once or twice she lent her hand, 

And bHssful palpitations in the blood, 10 

Stirring a sudden transport, rose and fell. 

But when we planted level feet, and dipt 
Beneath the satin dome and enter' d in. 
There, leaning deep in broider'd down, we sank 
Our elbows ; on a tripod in the midst 
A fragrant flame rose, and before us glow'd 
Fruit, blossom, viand, amber wine, and gold.^ 

Then she : " Let some one sing to us ; lightlier move 
The minutes fledg'd^ with music;" and a maid. 
Of those beside her, smote her harp, and sang: 20 

" Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean; 
Tears from the depth of some divine despair 
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, 
In looking on the happy autumn fields, 
And thinking of the days that are no more. 

" Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, 
That brings our friends up from the under world,^ 
Sad as the last which reddens over one 
That sinks with all we love below the verge, — 
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. 3^ 

" Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns 
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds 
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes 
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square,— 
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. 

" Dear as remember'd kisses after death. 
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd 
On lips that are for others ; deep as love, 
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret, — 
O death in life, the days that are no more."* 4^ 

1 Gold drinking cups and other table service. ^ Winged. 

3 " Under world," i.e., the world below the horizon. 
* See Introduction, p. 14. 



70 THE PRINCESS: [canto iv. 

She ended with such passion that the tear 
She sang of shook and fell, an erring ^ pearl 
Lost in her bosom. But with some disdain 
Answer'd the Princess : " If indeed there haunt 
About the molder'd lodges of the past 
So sweet a voice and vague, fatal to men, 
Well needs it we should cram our ears with wool ^ 
And so pace by. But thine are fancies hatch'd 
In silken-folded idleness ; nor is it 

Wiser to weep a true occasion lost, 50 

But trim our sails, and let old bygones be. 
While down the streams that float us each and all 
To the issue,3 goes, like ghttering bergs of ice. 
Throne after throne, and molten on the waste 
Becomes a cloud. For all things serve their time 
Toward that great year of equal mights and rights ; 
Nor would I fight with iron laws, in the end 
Found golden ; let the past be past ; let be 
Their cancel'd babels.* Tho' the rough kex ^ break 
The starr'd mosaic, and the beard-blown ♦J goat 60 

Hang on the shaft, and the wild fig tree ^ split 
Their monstrous idols, care not while we hear 
A trumpet in the distance pealing news 
Of better, and Hope, a poising eagle, burns 
Above the unrisen morrow. Then to me : 
" Know you no song of your own land? " she said; 

1 Wandering. 

2 The allusion is to the hero of the Odyssey, who stopped the ears of his 
comrades with wax that they might not be enchanted with the singing of 
the sirens. 

3 " To the issue," i.e., to the ultimate result; end of life. 
* Confusions ; disorders. 5 Hemlock. 

6 The reference is to " the wind blowing the beard on the height of the 
ruined pillar." 

"^ The Maid fig has often been noticed springing in ruins and splitting the 
stones of the structure. 



CANTO IV.] A MEDLEY. 71 

" Not such as moans about the retrospect, 
But deals with the other distance and the hues 
Of promise ; not a death's head at the wine." 1 

Then I remember'd one myself had made, 70 

What time I watch'd the swallow winging south 
From mine own land, part made long since, and part 
Now while I sang ; and maidenlike as far 
As I could ape their treble, did I sing : 

" O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying south, 
Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves. 
And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee. 

" O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each, 
That bright and fierce and fickle is the South, 
And dark and true and tender is the North. 80 

" O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light 
Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill. 
And cheep and twitter twenty million loves. 

" O were I thou that she might take me in. 
And lay me on her bosom, and her heart 
Would rock the snowy cradle till I died ! 

" Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love, 
Delaying as the tender ash delays 
To clothe herself when all the woods are green? 

" O tell her. Swallow, that thy brood is flown. OO 

Say to her, I do but wanton in the South, 
But in the North long since my nest is made. 

" O tell her, brief is life but love is long, 
And brief the sun of summer in the North, 
And brief the moon of beauty in the South. 

1 It was the Egyptian custom, according to Herodotus, to carry the minia- 
ture image of a dead body, made as like as possible, to each person at a feast, 
with the exhortation to enjoy, for when he was dead he would be like this. 



72 THE PRINCESS: [canto iv. 

" O Swallow, flying from the golden woods, 
Fly to her, and pipe, and woo her, and make her mine, 
And tell her, tell her, that I follow thee."l 

I ceas'd, and all the ladies, each at each, 
Like the Ithacensian suitors ^ in old time, loo 

Star'd with great eyes, and laugh'd with alien lips, 
And knew not what they meant ; for still my voice 
Rang false. But smihng, " Not for thee," she said, 
" O Bulbul,^ any rose of Guhstan * 
Shall burst her veil ; marsh divers,^ rather, maid, 
Shall croak thee sister, or the meadow crake ^ 
Grate her harsh kindred in the grass. And this 
A mere love poem! O for such, my friend. 
We hold them slight ; they mind us of the time 
When we made bricks in Egypt.'^ Knaves are men, no 

That lute and flute fantastic tenderness, 
And dress the victim to the offering up, 
And paint the gates of Hell with Paradise, 
And play the slave to gain the tyranny. 
Poor soul ! I had a maid of honor once ; 
She wept her true eyes blind for such a one, 
A rogue of canzonets ^ and serenades. 

1 See Introduction, p. 14. 

2 During the years Ulysses was absent from Ithaca, his wife Penelope was 
beset by many suitors. At his return in disguise they laughed in a con- 
strained and nervous way (" with other men's jaws," says Homer) under the 
spell of Athena, vaguely conscious of the approaching disclosure and their 
fate. 

3 The Persian name for the nightingale. 
* Persian for rose garden. 

5 " Marsh divers," i.e., water rails. 

^ " Meadow crake," i.e., the land rail or corncrake. Both this bird and 
the water rail have unmusical notes. 

"^ " They mind us," etc., i.e., they remind us of the time when in bondage, 
before a Moses came to' lead us out, we, the chosen people, made bricks (see 
Exod. i. 8-14). 8 Short songs. 



CANTO IV.] A MEDLEY. 73 

I lov'd her. Peace be with her ; she is dead. 

So they blaspheme the muse! But great is song 

Us'd to great ends. Ourself have often tried 120 

Valkyrian hymns, ^ or into rhythm have dash'd 

The passion of the prophetess ; for song 

Is duer unto freedom, force and growth 

Of spirit, than to junketing and love. 

Love is it? Would this same mock love, and this 

Mock Hymen,2 were laid up like winter bats,^ 

Till all men grew to rate us at our worth. 

Not vassals to be beat, nor pretty babes 

To be dandled, — no, but living wills, and spher'd 

Whole in ourselves and ow'd to none.* Enough! 130 

But now to leaven play with profit, you, 

Know you no song, the true growth of your soil, 

That gives the manners of your countrywomen? " 

She spoke, and turn'd her sumptuous head with eyes 
Of shining expectation fixt on mine. 
Then, while I dragg'd my brains for such a song, 
Cyril, with whom the bell-mouth 'd glass ^ had wrought, 
Or master'd by the sense of sport, began 
To troll a careless, careless ^ tavern catch 

Of Moll and Meg, and strange experiences 140 

Unmeet for ladies. Florian nodded at him, 

1 " Valkyrian hymns," i.e., such hymns as the Valkyrs sang. In Norse 
mythology the Valkyrs were handmaidens of Odin. They rode through the 
air to every battle, and with their spears pointed out the heroes who should 
fall. These they afterward led to Valhalla and ministered to them at banquets. 

2 Hymen was the Greek god of marriage. 

3 Bats sleep through the winter. 

4 " But living wills," etc., i.e., with wishes and powers like other human 
beings, rounded, complete in ourselves, and bound under obligations to no 
one. 

5 " Bell-mouth'd gla§s," i.e., wineglass. 

6 Repeated for emphasis. 



74 THE PRINCESS: [canto iv. 

I frowning ; Psyche flush'd and wann'd ^ and shook ; 

The hlyhke Mehssa droop'd her brows. 

" Forbear," the Princess cried ; *' Forbear, sir," I ; 

And, heated thro' and thro' with wrath and love, 

I smote him on the breast ; he started up ; 

There rose a shriek as of a city sack'd ; 

Mehssa clamor'd, ''Flee the death;" "To horse," 

Said Ida; ''home! to horse!" and fled, as flies 

A troop of snowy doves athwart the dusk, 150 

When some one batters at the dovecot doors. 

Disorderly the women. Alone I stood 

With Florian, cursing Cyril, vext at heart, 

In the pavilion. There, like parting hopes, 

I heard them passing from me ; hoof by hoof. 

And every hoof a knell to my desires, 

Clang' d on the bridge ; and then another shriek, 

"The Head, the Head, the Princess, O the Head!" 

For blind with rage she miss'd the plank, and roU'd 

In the river. Out I sprang from glow to gloom. 160 

There whirl'd her white robe like a blossom'd branch 

Rapt 2 to the horrible fall. A glance I gave, 

No more, but, woman-vested as I was, 

Plung'd ; and the flood drew ; yet I caught her ; then 

Oaring one arm, and bearing in my left 

The weight of all the hopes of half the world,^ 

Strove to buffet to land in vain. A tree 

Was half-disrooted from his place and stoop'd 

To drench his dark locks in the gurgling wave 

Mid-channel. Right on this we drove and caught, 170 

And grasping down the boughs I gain'd the shore. 

There stood her maidens glimmeringly group'd 
In the hollow bank. One reaching forward drew 

1 Grew pale. 2 Seized and carried. 

3 This line is replete with irony and tenderness. 



CANTO IV.] A MEDLEY. 75 

My burden from mine arms; they cried, " She Hves! " 

They bore her back into the tent. But I, 

So much a kind of shame within me wrought, 

Not yet endur'd to meet her opening eyes, 

Nor found my friends ; but push'd alone on foot 

(For since her horse was lost I left her mine) 

Across the woods, and less from Indian craft ^ 180 

Than beelike instinct hiveward,^ found at length 

The garden portals. Two great statues, Art 

And Science, caryatids,^ lifted up 

A weight of emblem, and betwixt were valves* 

Of openwork in which the hunter ^ rued 

His rash intrusion, manhke, but his brows 

Had sprouted, and the branches thereupon 

Spread out at top, and grimly spik'd the gates. 

A httle space was left between the horns, 
Thro' which I clamber'd o'er at top with pain, 190 

Dropt on the sward, and up the linden walks, 
And, tost on thoughts that chang'd from hue to hue, 
Now poring on the glowworm, now the star, 
I pac'd the terrace, till the Bear ^ had wheel'd 
Thro' a great arc his seven slow suns. 

A step 
Of Hghtest echo, then a loftier form 
Than female, moving thro' the uncertain gloom, 
Disturb'd me with the doubt, " If this were she," 

1 The skill of the Indian in finding his way through untracked forests. 

2 " Beelike instinct hive ward," i.e., the instinct by which bees fly straight 
to their hive from a long distance. 

3 Figures of women draped in long robes, M'hich serve as columns to sup- 
port an entablature or other superincumbent weight. 4 Gates. 

5 Actseon, a hunter, was, in the old myth, turned into a stag by Diana, 
having by accident come upon her and her nymphs while bathing. 

6 The Great Bear, Charles's Wain, the Dipper, are all names for this con- 
stellation, composed of seven stars near the North Star. 



76 THE PRINCESS: [canto iv. ' 

But it was Florian. " Hist, O hist," he said, i 

" They seek us ; out so late is out of rules. 200] 

Moreover, ' Seize the strangers ' is the cry. I 

How came you here? " I told him. " I," said he, _ J 

" Last of the train, a moral leper,^ I, H^l 

To whom none spake, half sick at heart, return'd. ^^H 

Arriving all confus'd among the rest, '^^1 

With hooded brows I crept into the hall, ;^^H 

And, couch'd behind a Judith,'^ underneath ^^^^H 

The head of Holofernes peep'd and saw. • ^^^| 

Girl after girl was call'd to trial ; each ^^^ 

Disclaim'd all knowledge of us. Last of all, 2Z(^ 

MeHssa ; trust me, sir, I pitied her. j 

She, question'd if she knew us men,^ at first | 

Was silent ; closer prest, denied it not ; 

And then, demanded * if her mother knew, .1 

Or Psyche, she affirm' d not, or denied ; 

From whence the royal mind, familiar with her, 

Easily gather'd either guilt. She sent j 

For Psyche, but she was not there ; she call'd 1 

For Psyche's child to cast it from the doors ; 

She sent for Blanche to accuse her face to face ; 220 

And I slipt out. But whither will you now? 

And where are Psyche? Cyril? both are fled. 

What if together? that were not so well. 

Would rather we had never come ! I dread 

His wildness, and the chances of the dark." 

" And yet," I said, " you wrong him more than I 
That struck him. This is proper to the clown, 

1 " Moral leper, " i.e., one shunned and despised for his disguise and 
untruth. 

2 A statue of Judith, the woman who cut off the head of Holofernes, the 
chief captain of Nebuchadnezzar, as he slept in his tent (see Judith viii.-xvi). 

3 Supply "to be " before " men." * Being asked. 



CANTO IV.] A MEDLEY. 77 

Tho' smock'd, or furr'd and purpled,i still the clown, 

To harm the thing that trusts him, and to shame 

That which he says he loves. For ^ Cyril, howe'er 230 

He deal in frolic, as to-night, — the song 

Might have been worse and sinn'd in grosser lips 

Beyond all pardon, — as it is, I hold 

These flashes on the surface are not he. 

He has a solid base of temperament ; 

But as the water lily starts and slides 

Upon the level in little puffs of wind, 

Tho' anchor'd to the bottom, such is he."^ 

Scarce had I ceas'd when from a tamarisk ^ near 
Two proctors leapt upon us, crying, " Names ! " 240 

He, standing still, was clutch'd ; but I began 
To thrid the musky-circled mazes,^ wind 
And double in and out the boles,^ and race 
By all the fountains. Fleet I was of foot. 
Before me shower'd the rose in flakes ; behind 
I heard the puff'd '^ pursuer ; at mine ear 
Bubbled ^ the nightingale and heeded not ; 

1 " Proper to the clown," etc., i.e., characteristic of the clown, whether 
clad in laborer's smock or royal purple. 2 As for. 

3 In a letter to Mr. Dawson, Tennyson says this illustration was suggested 
to him from " water lilies in my own pond, seen on a gusty day. . . . They 
did start and slide in the sudden puffs of wind, till caught and stayed by the 
tether of their own stalks." 

^ A small tree of southern Europe and Asia, sometimes called flowering 
cypress. 

5 " Thrid," etc., i.e., thread the network of paths in the sweet-scented air. 

^ " Wind and double," etc., i.e., wind in and out among the tree trunks. 

"^ Breathing heavily from violent exertion. 

8 " Once Mr. Tennyson . . . heard a nightingale singing with such a 
frenzy of passion that it was unconscious of everything else, and not fright- 
ened, though he came and stood quite close beside it ; he could see its eye 
flashing and feel the air bubble in his ear through the vibration." — Mrs. 
Anne Thackeray Ritchie. 



! 

7 8 THE PRINCESS: [canto iv. » 

And secret laughter tickled all my soul. 

At last I hook'd my ankle in a vine, 

That claspt the feet of a Mnemosyne,i 250 

And falling on my face was caught and known. 

They haled 2 us to the Princess where she sat 
High in the hall. Above her droop'd a lamp, 
And made the single jewel on her brow 
Burn like the mystic fire ^ on a masthead, 
Prophet of storm. A handmaid on each side 
Bow'd toward her, combing out her long black hair 
Damp from the river ; and close behind her stood 
Eight daughters of the plow, stronger than men, 
Huge women blowz'd^ with health, and wind, and rain, 260 
And labor. Each was like a Druid rock ; ^ 
Or like a spire of land that stands apart 
Cleft from the main, and wail'd about with mews.^ 

Then, as we came, the crowd dividing clove '^ 
An advent to the throne ; and therebeside. 
Half naked, as if caught at once from bed 
And tumbled on the purple footcloth, lay 
The lily-shining child ; and on the left, 
Bow'd on her palms and folded up from wrong, 
Her round white shoulder shaken with her sobs, 270 

Melissa knelt ; but Lady Blanche erect 
Stood up and spake, an affluent orator : 

1 The Greek goddess of memory, and mother of the Muses. 

2 Hauled. 

3 " Mystic fire," i.e., the appearance of electricity on the tip of a ship's 
mast, commonly called " St. Elmo's fire." 

* Made ruddy and coarse-complexioned. 

5 Strong pillars of stone exist in England (as at Stonehenge), and are sup- 
posed to be the remnants of the Druid worship. 

6 " Cleft from the main," etc., i.e., cut off from the mainland and wailed 
about by sea gulls. 7 A past tense of cleave. 



CANTO IV.] A MEDLEY. 79 

" It was not thus, O Princess, in old days; 
You priz'd my counsel, liv'd upon my lips. 
I led you then to all the Castahes ;i 
I fed you with the milk of every Muse ; 
I lov'd you like this kneeler, and you me. 
Your second mother. Those were gracious times. 
Then came your new friend ; you began to change, — 
I saw it and griev'd, — to slacken and to cool ; 280 

Till, taken with her seeming openness. 
You turn'd your warmer currents all to her. 
To me you froze ; this was my meed for all. 
Yet I bore up, in part from ancient love, 
And partly that I hop'd to win you back, 
And partly conscious of my own deserts. 
And partly that you were my civil head. 
And chiefly you were born for something great, 
In which I might your fellow-worker be. 

When time should serve ; and thus a noble scheme 290 

Grew up from seed we two long since had sown ; 
In us true growth, in her a Jonah's gourd,^ 
Up in one night and due to sudden sun. 
We took this palace ; but even from the first 
You stood in your own hght and darken'd mine. 
What student came but that you plan'd her path 
To Lady Psyche, younger, not so wise, 
A foreigner, and I your countrywoman, 
I your old friend and tried, she new in all? 
But still her lists were swell'd and mine were lean ; 300 

Yet I bore up in hope she would be known. 
Then came these wolves. They knew her ; they endur'd, 
Long closeted with her the yestermorn. 
To tell her what they were, and she to hear ; 
And me none told. Not less to an eye hke mine, 

1 Castaly, or Castalia, was the fountain on Parnassus sacred to the Muses. 

2 See Jonah, iv. 



So THE PRINCESS: [canto iv. 

A lidless ^ watcher of the pubhc weal, 

Last night their mask was patent, and my foot 

Was to you ; ^ but I thought again ; I f ear'd 

To meet a cold ' We thank you, we shall hear of it 

From Lady Psyche.' You had^ gone to her. 

She told, perforce ; and winning easy grace. 

No doubt, for slight delay, remain'd among us 

In our young nursery ^ still unknown, the stem 

Less grain than touchwood;^ while my honest heat 

Were all miscounted as malignant haste 

To push my rival out of place and power. 

But public use ^ requir'd' she should be known ; 

And since my oath was ta'en for public use, 

I broke the letter of it to keep the sensed 

I spoke not then at first, but watch'd them well, 320 

Saw that they kept apart, no mischief done ; 

And yet this day (tho' you should hate me for it) 

I came to tell you ; found that you had gone, 

Ridd'n to the hills, she likewise. Now, I thought, 

That surely she will speak ; if not, then I. 

Did she? These monsters blazon'd what they were. 

According to the coarseness of their kind, 

For thus I hear ; and known at last (my work), 

And full of cowardice and guilty shame, — 

I grant in her some sense of shame, — she flies; 330 

And I remain on whom to wreak your rage, 

I, that have lent my life to build up yours, 

1 Sleepless. 

2 " My foot was to you," i.e., I was about to go to you. 

3 Would have. 

4 " Young nursery," i.e., nursery for young trees. 

5 Decayed wood, called touchwood from its burning like tinder. 

6 Good; welfare. 

"7 Lady Blanche claims that she broke the exact promise of loyalty to keep 
the spirit, thinking that the lesson from Psyche's disloyalty would be the 
stronger from delay. 



CANTO IV.] A MEDLEY. 8.1 

I, that have wasted here health, wealth, and time, 
And talent, I — you know it — I will not boast. 
Dismiss me, and I prophesy your plan, 
Divorc'd from my experience, will be chaff 
For every gust of chance, and men will say 
We did not know the real hght, but chas'd 
The wisp that flickers where no foot can tread." i 

She ceas'd ; the Princess answer'd coldly, " Good ; 340 

Your oath is broken. We dismiss you ; go. 
For this lost lamb (she pointed to the child) 
Our mind is chang'd ; we take it to ourself." 

Thereat the lady stretch'd a vulture throat, 
And shot from crooked lips a haggard smile. 
" The plan was mine. I built the nest," she said, 
"To hatch the cuckoo. ^ — Rise!" and stoop'd to updrag 
Melissa. She, half on her mother propt. 
Half drooping from her, turn'd her face, and cast 
A liquid look on Ida, full of prayer, 350 

Which melted Florian's fancy as she hung, 
A Niobean ^ daughter, one arm out. 
Appealing to the bolts of Heaven ; and while 
We gaz'd upon her came a little stir 
About the doors, and on a sudden rush'd 
Among us, out of breath, as one pursu'd, 
A woman post in flying raiment. Fear 
Star'd in her eyes, and chalk'd * her face, and wing'd 

1 See Note 2, p. 20. 

2 The cuckoo does not build for itself, but lays its eggs in the nests of 
other birds, and leaves to the foster mother the task of rearing its young. 

3 Queen Niobe of Thebes, according to Greek legend, had twelve children, 
and boasted over Latona, who had but two. Thereupon these two, Apollo 
and Artemis, cast arrows from heaven and slew each of the twelve. Niobe 
herself was changed by Zeus into stone, and ever continued to weep for her sad 
fate. 4 Whitened ; made pale. 

6 



82 THE PRINCESS: [canto iv. 

Her transit to the throne, whereby she fell, 

Dehvering seal'd dispatches which the Head 360 

Took half amaz'd, and in her Hon's mood 

Tore open ; silent we with blind surmise 

Regarding, while she read, till over brow 

And cheek and bosom brake the wrathful bloom 

As of some fire against a stormy cloud. 

When the wild peasant rights himself,^ the rick 

Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens ; 

For anger most it seem'd, while now her breast, 

Beaten with some great passion at her heart. 

Palpitated, her hand shook, and we heard 370 

In the dead hush the papers that she held 

Rustle. At once the lost lamb at her feet 

Sent out a bitter bleating for its dam. 

The plaintive cry jarr'd on her ire ; she crush'd 

The scrolls together, made a sudden turn 

As if to speak, but, utterance failing her. 

She whirl'd them on to me, as who ^ should say, 

'' Read ;" and I read — two letters, one her sire's : 

" Fair daughter, when we sent the Prince your way 
We knew not your ungracious laws, which learnt, 380 

We, conscious of what temper you are built, 
Came all in haste to hinder wrong, but fell 

1 " And, indeed, in 1847, the state of the agricultural laborer, here [in The 
Princess] pictured on one day of holiday and feasting in the year, under the 
generosity of Sir Walter, *a great, broad-shoulder 'd, genial Englishman, ' was 
scarcely an inch better than it was in the year 1830, when all rural England 
was a cry of misery. One of the similes in The Princess is derived from the 
rick-burning into which the horrors of starvation and disease had driven the 
people. Of all this, Tennyson had either little conception, — only a few cared 
then, and he was of his time, — or he was absorbed in the glory of that Eng- 
lish country life in hall and park and comfortable farm, which he paints so 
well, as if that included more than a tenth of the rural population." — 
Stopford a. Brooke. 

2 One who. 



CANTO IV.] A MEDLEY. 2^2, 

Into his father's hands, who has this night, 
You lying close upon his territory, 
Slipt round and in the dark invested you. 
And here he keeps me hostage for his son." 

The second was my father's, running thus : 
" You have oiu: son ; touch not a hair of his head ; 
Render him up unscath'd ; give him your hand ; • 
Cleave to your contract ; tho' indeed we hear 390 

You hold the woman is the better man •} 
A rampant heresy, such as if it spread 
Would make all women kick against their lords 
Thro' all the world, and which might well deserve 
That we this night should pluck your palace down ; 
And we will do it, unless you send us back 
Our son, on the instant, whole." 

So far I read ; 
And then stood up and spoke impetuously : 

" Oh, not to pry and peer on your reserve, 
But led by golden wishes, and a hope, 400 

The child of regal compact,^ did I break 
Your precinct ; not a scorner of your sex 
But venerator, zealous it should be 
All that it might be. Hear me, for I bear, 
Tho' man, yet human, whatsoe'er your wrongs, 
From the flaxen curl to the gray lock, a life 
Less mine than yours. My nurse would tell me of you; 
I babbled for you, as babies for the moon, 

1 " The better man, " i.e., the better of mankind. There is also humorous 
allusion to the simpler meaning of the word " man." 

2 " The child of regal compact," i.e., the offspring of the sacred vow of 
the two kings. A compact between kings is more sacred than one between 
other men, because of the divine authority with which they rule— was the 
old faith. 



84 THE PRINCESS: [canto iv. 

Vague brightness ; ^ when a boy, you stoop'd to me 

From all high places, liv'd in all fair lights, 410 

Came in long breezes rapt from inmost south 

And blown to inmost north ; at eve and dawn 

With ' Ida, Ida, Ida,' rang the woods ; 

The leader 2 wild swan in among the stars 

Would clang it, and lapt in wreaths of glowworm light ^ 

The mellow breaker murmur'd * Ida.' Now, 

Because I would have reach'd you had you been 

Spher'd up with Cassiopeia,^ or the enthron'd 

Persephone ^ in Hades, now at length, 

Those winters of abeyance ^ all worn out, 420 

A man I came to see you. But, indeed, 

Not in this frequence ^ can I lend full tongue, 

O noble Ida, to those thoughts that wait 

On you, their center. Let me say but this. 

That many a famous man and woman, town 

And landskip,^ have I heard of, after seen 

The dwarfs of presage ;9 tho' when known, there grew 

Another kind of beauty in detail 

Made them worth knowing ; but in you I found 

My boyish dream involv'd and dazzled down 430 

And master'd, while that after beauty makes 

Such head from act to act, from hour to hour, 

1 "Vague brightness," i.e., brightness unknown and uncertain in char- 
acter, as the splendor of the moon to babies. 

2 The leader flies at the point of the V-shaped figure in which swans take 
their higher flights. 

3 " Glowworm light," i.e., the phosphorescent light of the sea. 

* In Greek myth an Ethiopian queen, who was taken to the skies and be- 
came the constellation which bears her name. 

5 Persephone, or Proserpina, was snatched from the earth by Pluto, who 
made her his wife and queen of the lower world. 

^ " Winters of abeyance," i.e., long periods of suspense. 

"^ Crowd; throng. 8 Landscape. 

3 " Dwarfs of presage," i.e., they were smaller than I conceived them to be. 






CANTO IV.] A MEDLEY. 85 

Within me, that except you slay me here, 

According to your bitter statute book, 

I cannot cease to follow you, as they say 

The seal does music ;i who desire you more 

Than growing boys their manhood ; dying lips, 

With many thousand matters left to do, 

The breath of life ; Oh, more than poor men wealth, 

Than sick men health, — yours, yours, not mine, — but half 440 

Without you, — with you, whole, — and of those halves 

You worthiest ; and howe'er you block and bar 

Your heart with system out from mine, 1 hold 

That it becomes no man to nurse despair. 

But in the teeth of clench'd antagonisms 

To follow up the worthiest till he die. 

Yet that I came not all unauthoriz'd 

Behold your father's letter." 

On one knee 
Kneeling, I gave it, which she caught, and dash'd 
Unopen'd at her feet. A tide of fierce 450 

Invective seem'd to wait behind her lips. 
As waits a river level with the dam, 
Ready to burst and flood the world with foam. 
And so she would have spoken, but there rose 
A hubbub in the court ^ of half the maids 
Gather'd together. From the illumin'd hall 
Long lanes of splendor slanted o'er a press 
Of snowy shoulders thick as herded ewes. 
And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes. 
And gold and golden heads. They to and fro 460 

Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale. 
All open-mouth'd, all gazing to the light. 
Some crying there was an army in the land. 
And some that men were in the very w^alls, 

1 Many stories are told of seals being attracted by, and following, music. 

2 The court adjoined the hall in which the Princess sat. 



86 THE PRINCESS: [canto iv. 

And some they car'd not ; till a clamor grew 
As of a new-world Babel, woman-built, 
And worse confounded. High above them stood 
The placid marble Muses, looking peace. 

Not peace she look'd, the Head ; but rising up, 
Rob'd in the long night of her deep hair, so 470 

To the open window mov'd, remaining there 
Fixt like a beacon tower above the waves 
Of tempest, when the crimson-rolling eye ^ 
Glares ruin, and the wild birds on the light 
Dash themselves dead. She stretch'd her arms and call'd 
Across the tumult, and the tumult fell : 

"What fear ye, brawlers? am not I your Head ? 
On me, me, me, the storm first breaks; /dare 
All these male thunderbolts ; what is it ye fear ? 
Peace! there are those ^ to avenge us, and they come. 480 

If not, — myself were like enough, O girls. 
To unfurl the maiden banner of our rights. 
And clad in iron burst the ranks of war, 
Or, falhng, protomartyr^ of our cause. 
Die. Yet I blame you not so much for fear ; 
Six thousand years of fear have made you that 
From which I would redeem you. But for those 
That stir this hubbub — you and you — I know 
Your faces there in the crowd — to-morrow morn 
We hold a great convention ; then shall they 490 

That love their voices more than duty, learn 
With whom they deal, dismiss'd in shame to live 
No wiser than their mothers, household stuff. 
Live chattels, mincers of each other's fame, 

1 " Crimson-rolling eye," i.e., tlie revolving light of the beacon. Birds, 
drawn by the light, dash themselves against the glass and are killed. 

2 Brothers of the Princess. 3 The first martyr or witness. 



CANTO IV.] A MEDLEY. 87 

Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown, 

The drunkard's football, laughingstocks of Time, 

Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels, 

But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum, 

To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour. 

Forever slaves at home and fools abroad." 500 

She, ending, wav'd her hands ; thereat the crowd. 
Muttering, dissolv'd. Then with a smile, that look'd 
A stroke of cruel ^ sunshine on the cliff. 
When all the glens are drown' d in azure gloom 
Of thundershower, she floated to us and said : 

" You have done well and like a gentleman. 
And hke a prince ; you have our thanks for all. 
And you look well too in your woman's dress ; 
Well have you done and like a gentleman. 

You sav'd our hfe ; we owe you bitter thanks. 510 

Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood ; 
Then men had said — but now — What hinders me 
To take such bloody vengeance on you both? — 
Yet since our father — Wasps in our good hive, 
You would-be quenchers of the light to be. 
Barbarians, grosser than your native bears ^ — 
Oh, would I had his scepter for one hour! 
You that have dar'd to break our bound, and guU'd 
Our servants, wrong'd and lied and thwarted us — 
/wed with thee! /bound by precontract 520 

Your bride, your bond slave ! Not tho' all the gold 
That veins the world were pack'd to make your crown, 
And every spoken tongue should lord you. Sir, 
Your falsehood and yourself are hateful to us ; 
I trample on your offers and on you. 
Begone; we will not look upon you more. — 

1 Cruel because all below is dark and stormdriven. 

2 " Your native bears," i.e., the bears of the north of Europe. 



88 THE PRINCESS: [canto iv. 

Here, push them out at gates." 

In wrath she spake. 
Then those eight mighty daughters of the plow 
Bent their broad faces toward us, and address'd i 
Their motion. Twice I sought to plead my cause, 530 

But on my shoulder hung their heavy hands, 
The weight of destiny ; so from her face 
They push'd us, down the steps, and thro' the court, 
And with grim laughter thrust us out at gates. 

We cross'd the street and gain'd a petty mound 
Beyond it, whence we saw the lights and heard 
The voices murmuring. While I hsten'd, came 
On a sudden the weird seizure and the doubt. 
I seem'd to move among a world of ghosts ; 
The Princess with her monstrous woman-guard, 540 

The jest and earnest working side by side. 
The cataract and the tumult and the kings 
Were shadows; and the long fantastic night 
With all its doings had and had not been. 
And all things wxre and were not. 

This went by 
As strangely as it came, and on my spirits 
Settled a gentle cloud of melancholy. 
Not long ; I shook it off ; for spite of doubts 
And sudden ghostly shadowings, I was one 
To whom the touch of all mischance but came 550 

As night to him that, sitting on a hill. 
Sees the midsummer, midnight, Norway sun 
Set into sunrise.- Then we mov'd away. 

1 Directed; turned. 

2 Upon the Arctic circle the sun does not set on midsummer day, June 22, 
but remains above the horizon for twenty-four hours. Norway stands for the 
Northern country, because it is along its shores that travelers commonly coast 
to witness the midnight sun. 



INTERLUDE.] A MEDLEY. 



INTERLUDE. 

Thy voice is heard thro' rolling drums, 

That beat to battle where he stands ; 
Thy face across his fancy comes, 

And gives the battle to his hands. 
A moment, while the trumpets blow. 

He sees his brood about thy knee ; 
The next, like fire he meets the foe. 

And strikes him dead for thine and thee. 

So Lilia sang ; we thought her half possess'd,! 

She struck such warbhng fury thro' the words ; i o 

And, after, feigning pique at what she call'd 

The raillery, or grotesque, or false subHme, — 

Like one that wishes at a dance to change 

The music, — clapt her hands and cried for war. 

Or some grand fight to kill and make an end. 

And he that next inherited the tale 

Half turning to the broken statue, said, 

" Sir Ralph has got your colors ; if I prove 

Your knight, and fight )^our battle, what for me ? " 

It chanc'd her empty glove upon the tomb 20 

Lay by her like a model of her hand. 

She took it and she flung it. " Fight," she said, 

"And make us all we would be, great and good." 

He, knightlike in his cap instead of casque, 

A cap of Tyrol ^ borrowed from the hall, 

Arrang'd the favor, and assum'd the Prince. 

1 With an evil spirit. 

2 The Tyrolese, who live in the Alps south of Bavaria, wear gay-colored 
caps. 



90 THE PRINCESS: [canto v. 



CANTO V. 

Now, scarce three paces measur'd from the mound, 

We stumbled on a stationary voice,i 

And, " Stand, who goes ? " "Two from the palace," I. 

"The second two;^ they wait," he said, "pass on; 

His Highness wakes." And one, that clash'd in arms, 

By glimmering lanes and walls of canvas led 

Threading the soldier-city, till we heard 

The drowsy folds of oiu* great ensign shake 

From blazon'd Hons o'er the imperial tent 

Whispers of war. 

Entering, the sudden light 
Daz'd me half blind. I stood and seem'd to hear, 
As in a poplar grove when a light wind wakes 
A lisping of the innumerous ^ leaf, and dies. 
Each hissing in his neighbor's ear ; and then 
A strangled titter, out of which there brake 
On all sides, clamoring etiquette to death, 
Unmeasur'd mirth ; while now the two old kings 
Began to wag their baldness up and down, 
The fresh young captains flash'd their glittering teeth. 
The huge bush-bearded barons heav'd and blew. 
And slain with laughter roU'd the gilded squire. 

At length my sire, his rough cheek wet with tears, 
Panted from weary sides, " King, you are free ! 

1 " Stationary voice," i.e., the voice of a sentinel. 

2 Cyril and Psyche had already come. 

3 Innumerable. 



CANTO v.] A MEDLEY. 91 

We did but keep you surety for our son, 

If this be he, — or a draggled mawkin,i thou, 

That tends her bristled grunters in the sludge;" 

For I was drench'd with ooze, and torn with briers. 

More crumpled than a poppy from the sheath,^ 

And all one rag, disprinc'd from head to heel. 

Then some one sent beneath his vaulted palm 30 

A whisper'd jest to some one near him, " Look, 

He has been among his shadows." " Satan take 

The old women and their shadows! " — thus the king 

Roar'd — " Make yourself a man to fight with men. 

Go ; Cyril told us all." 

As boys that slink 
From ferule and the trespass-chiding eye, 
Away we stole, and transient ^ in a trice 
From what was left of faded woman-slough* 
To sheathing splendors and the golden scale 
Of harness, issu'd in the sun, that now 40 

Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth, 
And hit the northern hills. Here Cyril met us, 
A Httle shy at first, but by and by 
We twain, with mutual pardon ask'd and given 
For stroke and song, resolder'd ^ peace, whereon 
Followed his tale. Amaz'd he fled away 
Thro' the dark land, and later in the night 
Had come on Psyche weeping. '' Then we fell 
Into your father's hand, and there she Hes, 
But will not speak, nor stir." 

He show'd a tent 50 

1 A slattern who tends pigs in the mire. 

2 The silky petals of the poppy are limp and crumpled wlien the sepals 
fall apart. 3 Passing. 

4 While slough means properly the skin of a serpent, it may refer to any 
part that is shed or molted, as here, of clothing. 

5 Soldered again ; made whole again. 



92 THE PRINCESS: [canto v. 

A stone-shot off. We enter'd in, and there 

Among pil'd arms and rough accouterments, 

Pitiful sight, wrapp'd in a soldier's cloak, 

Like some sweet sculpture drap'd from head to foot, 

And push'd by rude hands from its pedestal. 

All her fair length upon the ground she lay ; 

And at her head a follower of the camp, 

A charr'd and wrinkled piece of womanhood, 

Sat watching like a watcher by the dead. 

Then Florian knelt, and " Come," he whisper'd to her, 60 
" Lift up your head, sweet sister ; He not thus. 
What have you done but right? You could not slay 
Me, nor your Prince. Look up ; be comforted. 
Sweet is it to have done the thing one ought. 
When fall'n in darker ways." And Hkewise I : 
" Be comforted ; have I not lost her too, 
In whose least act abides the nameless charm 
That none has else for me ? " She heard, she mov'd. 
She moan'd, a folded voice ;^ and up she sat, 
And rais'd the cloak from brows as pale and smooth 70 

As those that mourn half shrouded over death 
In deathless marble.^ " Her," she said, " my friend — 
Parted from her — betray' d her cause and mine — 
Where shall I breathe ? why kept ye not your faith ? ^ 
O base and bad! what comfort? none for me! " 
To whom remorseful Cyril, '' Yet I pray 
Take comfort; live, dear lady, for your child!" 
At which she lifted up her voice and cried : 

"Ah me, my babe, my blossom! ah, my child. 
My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more! 80 

1 " A folded voice," i.e., a voice from the midst of folds. 

2 Referring to the marble sculpture of monuments ; the " deathless marble " 
of Michael Angelo's Pieta, in Rome, has been suggested. 

3 Promise to leave the college soon. 



CANTO v.] A MEDLEY. 93 

For now will cruel Ida keep her back ; 

And either she will die from want of care, 

Or sicken with ill usage, when they say 

' The child is hers ' ^ — for every Httle fault, 

' The child is hers ' ; and they will beat my girl, 

Remembering her mother. O my flower! 

Or they will take her, they will make her hard, 

And she will pass me by in after life 

With some cold reverence worse than were she dead. 

Ill 2 mother that I was to leave her there, 90 

To lag behind, scar'd by the cry they made, 

The horror of the shame among them all. 

But I will go and sit beside the doors, 

And make a wild petition night and day, 

Until they hate to hear me like a wind 

Wailing forever, till they open to me, 

And lay my Httle blossom at my feet. 

My babe, my sweet Aglaia, my one child! 

And I will take her up and go my way. 

And satisfy my soul with kissing her. 100 

Ah! what might that man not deserve of me 

Who gave me back my child! " "Be comforted," 

Said Cyril, " you shall have it." But again 

She veil'd her brows, and prone she sank, and so 

Like tender things that being caught feign death, 

Spoke not, nor stirr'd. 

By this a murmur ran 
Thro' all the camp, and inward rac'd the scouts 
With rumor of Prince Arac ^ hard at hand. 
We left her by the woman, and without 
Found the gray kings at parle ;* and " Look you," cried no 

1 Psyche's. 

2 Evil ; wicked. 

2 See Canto I. line 152. 

4 " At parle," i.e., in parley; conference. 



94 THE PRINCESS: [canto v. 

My father, '' that our compact be fulfill'd. 

You have spoilt this child ; she laughs at you and man ; 

She wrongs herself, her sex, and me, and him. 

But red-fac'd war has rods of steel and fire ; 

She yields, or war." 

Then Gama turn'd to me : 
" We fear, indeed, you spent a stormy time 
With our strange girl ; and yet they say that still 
You love her. Give us, then, your mind at large ; 
How say you, war or not? " 

" Not war, if possible, 
O king," I said, "lest from the abuse of war, 120 

The desecrated shrine, the trampled year,i 
The smoldering homestead, and the household flower 
Torn from the lintel, ^ — all the common wrong, 
A smoke go up thro' which I loom to her 
Three times a monster. Now she lightens scorn ^ 
At him that mars her plan, but then would hate 
(And every voice she talk'd with ratify it. 
And every face she look'd on justify it) 
The general foe. More soluble is this knot 
By gentleness than war. I want her love. 130 

What were I nigher this altho' we dash'd 
Your cities into shards * with catapults ? ^ 
She would not love; — or brought her chain'd, a slave, 
The lifting of whose eyelash is my lord ? 
Not ever would she love ; but brooding turn 
The book of scorn, till all my flitting chance 

1 Harvest. 

2 The horizontal timber or stone resting on the jamb of the door ; it stands 
here for house, household, family life. The phrase, " household flower torn 
from the lintel," means the loss by violence of some member of the family. 

3 "Lightens scorn," i.e., flashes scorn, as lightning, from her eyes. 

4 Fragments. 

5 Military engines used to throw huge darts and stones and other missile^ 
against walled towns and towers. 



CANTO v.] A MEDLEY. 95 

Were caught within the record of her wrongs, 

And crush'd to death. And rather, sire, than this 

I would the old god of war himself were dead, 

Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills, 140 

Rotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck. 

Or like an old-world mammoth bulk'd in ice,^ 

Not to be molten out." 

And roughly spake 
My father : '* Tut, you know them not, the girls. 
Boy, when I hear you prate I almost think 
That idiot legend ^ credible. Look you, sir! 
Man is the hunter ; woman is his game. 
The sleek and shining creatures of the chase, 
We hunt them for the beauty of their skins ; 
They love us for it, and we ride them down. 150 

Wheedling and siding with them! Out! for shame! 
Boy, there's no rose that's half so dear to them 
As he that does the thing they dare not do. 
Breathing and sounding beauteous battle, comes 
With the air of the trumpet round him, and leaps in 
Among the women, snares them by the score 
Flatter'd and fluster'd, wins, tho' dash'd with death 
He reddens what he kisses. Thus I won 
Your mother, a good mother, a good wife, 

Worth winning; but this firebrand — gentleness 160 

To such as her! if Cyril spake her true. 
To catch a dragon in a cherry net,^ 
To trip a tigress with a gossamer, 
Were wisdom to it." 

1 " With ribs of wreck," etc., i.e., like a wrecked ship, the ribs of which 
remain long after the lighter parts are fallen away ; or like the mammoth, the 
huge elephant of former geologic age, still found embedded (" bulk'd") in 
the ice banks of Siberia. 

2 The legend of the sorcerer (see Canto I. line 5). 

3 " Cherry net," i.e., a net to protect cherries from the birds. 



96 THE PRINCESS: [canto v. 

'' Yea, but sire," I cried, 
" Wild natures need wise curbs. The soldier ? No ; 
What dares not Ida do that she should prize 
The soldier? I beheld her, when she rose 
The yesternight, and storming in extremes 
Stood for her cause, and flung defiance down 
Gagelike 1 to man, and had not shunn'd the death, — 170 

No, not the soldier's. Yet I hold her, king. 
True woman ; but you clash them all in one,^ 
That have as many differences as we. 
The violet varies from the lily as far 
As oak from elm. One loves the soldier, one 
The silken priest of peace, one this, one that, 
And some unworthily ; their sinless faith, 
A maiden moon that sparkles on a sty,^ 
Glorifying clown and satyr ; whence they need 
More breadth of culture. Is not Ida right ? 180 

They worth it ? truer to the law within ? ^ 
Severer in the logic of a life? ^ 
Twice as magnetic ^ to sweet influences 
Of earth and heaven? And she of whom you speak, 
My mother, looks as whole ^ as some serene 
Creation minted in the golden moods 
Of sovereign artists ; not a thought, a touch, 
But pure as lines of green that streak the white 
Of the first snowdrop's inner leaves ; I say, 

1 Like a challenge to combat. In the days of chivalry it was customary 
for the challenger to cast on the ground a glove or gauntlet. He who took it 
up accepted the challenge. 

2 " Clash them," etc., i.e., bunch them roughly all in one. 

3 " Maiden moon," etc., i.e., the pure moon, that shines upon the meanest 
thing. 

4 The "law within" is the conscience; the moral sense; the sense of 
right and wrong. 

5 " Logic of a life," i.e., devotion to principle. 
^ Susceptible. '^ Complete. 



CANTO v.] A MEDLEY. 97 

Not like the piebald miscellany, man, 190 

Bursts of great heart and slips in sensual mire, 

But whole and one ; and take them all in all. 

Were we ourselves but half as good, as kind, 

As truthful, much that Ida claims as right 

Had ne'er been mooted, but as frankly theirs 

As dues of Nature. To our point : not war, 

Lest I lose all." 

" Nay, nay, you spake but sense," 
Said Gama. '' We remember love ourself 
In our sweet youth ; we did not rate him then 
This red-hot iron to be shap'd with blows. 200 

You talk almost like Ida ; she can talk ; 
And there is something in it as you say. 
But you talk kindlier ; we esteem you for it. — 
He seems a gracious and a gallant prince, 
I would he had our daughter. For the rest. 
Our own detention, why, the causes weigh'd, 
Fatherly fears ^ — you us'd us courteously — 
We would do much to gratify your Prince — 
We pardon it ; and for your ingress here 

Upon the skirt and fringe of our fair land, 210 

You did but come as goblins in the night. 
Nor in the furrow broke the plowman's head. 
Nor burnt the grange, nor buss'd the milking-maid, 
Nor robb'd the farmer of his bowl of cream. 
But let yoiu- Prince (our royal word upon it 
He comes back safe) ride with us to our Hues, 
And speak with Arac. Arac's word is thrice 
As ours with Ida.^ Something may be done — 
I know not what — and ours shall see us friends. — 
You, likewise, our late guests, if so you will, 220 

1 " Our own detention," etc., i.e., we pardon our own detention, since the 
occasion of it was fatherly fears. 

2 " Is thrice," etc., i.e., has three times the force of ours with Ida. 

7 



100 THE PRINCESS: [canto v. 

And so I often told her, right or wrong. 

And, Prince, she can be sweet to those she loves ; 

And, right or wrong, I care not ; this is all : 280 

I stand upon her side ; she made me swear it — 

'Sdeath — and with solemn rites by candlehght 1 — 

Swear by St. something— I forget her name — 

Her that talk'd down the fifty wisest men ; 2 

She was a princess too ; and so I swore. 

Come, this is all ; she will not ; waive your claim. 

If not, the foughten ^ field, what else, at once 

Decides it, 'sdeath! against my father's will." 

I lagg'd in answer, loath to render up 
My precontract, and loath by brainless war 290 

To cleave the rift of difference deeper yet ; 
Till one of those two brothers, half aside, 
And fingering at the hair about his lip, 
To prick us on to combat : " Like to Hke ! 
The woman's garment hid the woman's heart," — 
A taunt that clench'd his purpose like a blow! 
For fiery short was Cyril's counter-scoff,* 
And sharp I answer'd, touch'd upon the point ^ 
Where idle boys are cowards to their shame : 
** Decide it here ; why not? we are three to three." 300 

Then spake the third : " But three to three? no more ? 
No more, and in our noble sister's cause ? 
More, more, for honor! Every captain waits 
Hungry for honor, angry for his king. 

1 " By candlelight," i.e., by the candlelight of the church. 

2 The reference is to St. Catherine of Alexandria. There is a legend that 
she confuted and converted to Christianity fifty wise men, whom a Roman 
emperor of the fourth century sent to dispute with her. 

3 An old form of " fought." 
* Taunt in return. 

5 The moral courage to stand fast by calmer judgment. 



CANTO v.] A MEDLEY. loi 

More, more, some fifty on a sidel that each 
May breathe himself, and quick, by overthrow 
Of these or those, the question settled, die." 

" Yea," answer'd I, ''for this wild wreath of air, 
This flake of rainbow flying on the highest 

Foam of men's deeds, — this honor, if ye will! 310 

It needs must be for honor if at all ; 
Since, what decision ? If we fail, we fail. 
And if we win, we fail ; she would not keep 
Her compact." " 'Sdeath! but we will send to her," 
Said Arac, " worthy reasons why she should 
Bide by this issue ; let our missive thro'. 
And you shall have her answer by the word." 

" Boys! " shriek'd the old king, but vainlier than a hen 
To her false daughters in the poolj^ for none 
Regarded, neither seem'd there more to say. 320 

Back rode we to my father's camp, and found 
He thrice had sent a herald to the gates. 
To learn if Ida yet would cede our claim. 
Or by denial flush 2 her babbling wells 
With her own people's life. Three times he went. 
The first, he blew and blew, but none appear'd ; 
He batter'd at the doors ; none came. The next. 
An awful voice within had warn'd him thence. 
The third, and those eight daughters of the plow 
Came sallying thro' the gates, and caught his hair, 330 

And so belabor'd him on rib and cheek 
They made him wild. Not less one glance he caught 
Thro' open doors of Ida station'd there 
Unshaken, clinging to her purpose, firm 
Tho' compass'd by two armies and the noise 

1 " Her false daughters," etc., i.e., the ducklings which she has hatched. 

2 Means both to fill or drench copiously, and to redden. 



104 THE PRINCESS: [canto v. 

And prosper'd ; till a rout of saucy boys 

Brake on us at our books, and marr'd our peace, 

Mask'd like our maids, blustering I know not what 

Of insolence and love, some pretext held 

Of baby troth, invalid, since my will 

Seal'd not the bond — the striplings! — for their sport! — 

I tam'd my leopards; shall I not tame these? 390 

Or you ? or I ? For since you think me touch'd 

In honor — what! I would not aught of false — 

Is not our cause pure? And whereas I know 

Your prowess, Arac, and what mother's blood 

You draw from, fight ; you failing, I abide 

What end soever ; fail you will not. Still, 

Take not his life ; he risk'd it for my own ; 

His mother lives ; yet whatsoe'er you do. 

Fight and fight well ; strike and strike home. O dear 

Brothers, the woman's angel guards you, you 400 

The sole men to he mingled with our cause, 

The sole men we shall prize in the after time, 

Your very armor hallow'd, and your statues 

Rear'd, sung to, when, this gadfly brush' d aside. 

We plant a solid foot into the time, 

And mold a; generation strong to move 

With claim on claim from right to right, till she 

Whose name is yok'd with children's,^ know herself ; 

And Knowledge in our own land make her free. 

And, ever following those two crowned twins, 410 

Commerce and Conquest, shower the fiery grain 

Of freedom broadcast over all that orbs 

Between the northern and the southern morn." 

Then came a postscript dash'd across the rest : 
" See that there be no traitors in your camp. 
We seem a nest of traitors — none to trust 

1 In the common phrase, " Avomen and children." 



CANTO v.] A MEDLEY. 105 

Since our arms faiPd — this Egypt-plague of men!i 

Almost our maids were better at their homes 

Than thus man-girdled here. Indeed I think 

Our chief est comfort is the little child 420 

Of one unworthy mother, which she left. 

She shall not have it back ; the child shall grow 

To prize the authentic mother of her mind.^ 

I took it for an hour in mine own bed 

This morning ; there the tender orphan hands 

Felt at my heart, and seem'd to charm from thence 

The wrath I nurs'd against the world. Farewell." 

I ceas'd ; he said, " Stubborn, but she may sit 
Upon a king's right hand in thunderstorms. 
And breed up warriors! See now, tho' yourself 430 

Be dazzled by the wildfire Love to sloughs 
That swallow common sense, the spindling king, 
This Gama swamp'd in lazy tolerance! 
When the man wants weight, the woman takes it up, 
And topples down the scales ; but this is fixt 
As are the roots of earth and base of all : 
Man for the field and woman for the hearth ; 
Man for the sword and for the needle she ; 
Man with the head and woman with the heart ; 
Man to command and woman to obey ; 440 

All else confusion. Look you! the gray mare 
Is ill to hve with, when her whinny shrills 
From tile to scullery ;3 and her small goodman 
Shrinks in his armchair, while the fires of hell 
Mix with his hearth.^ But you — she's yet a colt — 
Take, break her. Strongly groom'd and straitly curb'd, 

1 See Exod. viii-x. 

2 When Ida shall have reared her to her views. 

3 " From tile to scullery," i.e., from tile roof to back kitchen. 
* Discord is in his house. 



io8 THE PRINCESS: [canto v. 

Among the thickest and bore down a prince, 

And Cyril one. Yea, let me make my dream 

All that I would. But that large-molded man, 

His visage all agrin as at a wake,^ 510 

Made at me thro' the press ; and, staggering back, 

With stroke on stroke the horse and horseman came, 

As comes a pillar of electric cloud,^ 

Flaying the roofs, and sucking up the drains, 

And shadowing down the champaign till it strikes 

On a wood, and takes, and breaks, and cracks, and splits. 

And twists the grain with such a roar that Earth 

Reels, and the herdsmen cry ; for everything 

Gave way before him. Only Florian, he 

That lov'd me closer than his own right eye, 520 

Thrust in between ; but Arac rode him down. 

And Cyril seeing it, push'd against the prince, 

With Psyche's color round his helmet, tough. 

Strong, supple, sinew-corded, apt at arms ; 

But tougher, heavier, stronger, he that smote 

And threw him. Last I spurr'd ; I felt my veins 

Stretch with fierce heat ; a moment hand to hand. 

And sword to sword, and horse to horse we hung. 

Till I struck out and shouted ; the blade glanc'd, 

I did but shear a feather, and dream and truth 530 

Flow'd from me ; darkness clos'd me, and I fell. 



Home they brought her warrior dead ; 

She nor swoon'd, nor utter'd cry; ' 

All her maidens, watching, said, 

" She must weep or she will die." 

1 A wake was a festival to celebrate the building of a parish church, and 
was kept by an all-night watch in the church. Tents near by afforded food 
to the watchers. In time devotion and reverence fell away, and the feasts be- 
came a mere fair and merrymaking. 

2 " Pillar of electric cloud," i.e., a cyclone cloud. 



CANTO VI.] A MEDLEY. 109 

Then they prais'd him, soft and low, 

Call'd him worthy to be lov'd. 
Truest friend and noblest foe ; 

Yet she neither spoke nor mov'd. 

Stole a maiden from her place. 

Lightly to the warrior stept. 
Took the face cloth from the face ; 

Yet she neither mov'd nor wept. 

Rose a nurse of ninety years, 

Set his child upon her knee ; 
Like summer tempest came her tears — 

" Sweet my child, I live for thee." l 



CANTO VI. 

My dream had never died, or liv'd again. 
As in some mystic middle state I lay ; 
Seeing. I saw not, hearing not, I heard ; 
Tho', if I saw not, yet they told me all 
So often that I speak as having seen. 

For so it seem'd, or so they said to me. 
That all things grew more tragic and more strange ; 
That when om* side was vanquish'd and my cause 
Forever lost, there went up a great cry, 
** The Prince is slain." My father heard and ran 
In on the hsts, and there unlac'd my casque. 
And grovel'd on my body ; and after him 
Came Psyche, sorrowing for Aglaia. 

But high upon the palace Ida stood 
1 See Introduction, p. 14. 



112 THE PRINCESS: [canto vi. 

And follow'd up by a hundred airy does, 

Steps with a tender foot, hght as on air, 

The lovely, lordly creature floated on 

To where her wounded brethren lay ; there stay'd ; 

Knelt on one knee, — the child on one, — and prest 

Their hands, and call'd them dear deliverers, 

And happy warriors, and immortal names, 

And said, " You shall not lie in the tents but here, 

And nurs'd by those for whom you fought, and serv'd 

With female hands and hospitality." 80 

Then, whether mov'd by this, — or was it chance, — 
She past my way. Up started from my side 
The old lion, glaring with his whelpless eye, 
Silent. But when she saw me lying stark, 
Dishelm'd and mute, and motionlessly pale, 
Cold ev'n to her, she sigh'd ; and when she saw 
The haggard father's face and reverend beard 
Of grisly twine all dabbled with the blood 
Of his own son, shudder'd, a twitch of pain 
Tortur'd her mouth, and o'er her forehead past 90 

A shadow, and her hue chang'd, and she said : 
" He sav'd my life ; my brother slew him for it ;" 
No more ; at which the king in bitter scorn 
Drew from my neck the painting and the tress,i 
And held them up. She saw them, and a day 
Rose from the distance on her memory, 
When the good queen, her mother, shore ^ the tress 
With kisses, ere the days of Lady Blanche. 
And then once more she look'd at my pale face ; 
Till, understanding all the foolish work 100 

Of Fancy,^ and the bitter close of all, 

1 See Canto I. lines 37, 38. 

2 The old past tense of " shear." 

3 Fanciful ideals, such as her own. 



CANTO VI.] A MEDLEY. 113 

Her iron will was broken in her mind ; 

Her noble heart was molten in her breast. 

She bow'd ; she set the child on the earth ; she laid 

A feehng finger on my brows, and presently, 

"O sire," she said, "he lives; he is not dead; 

O let me have him with my brethren here 

In om- own palace. We will tend on him 

Like one of these ; if so, by any means, 

To Hghten this great clogi of thanks that make no 

Our progress falter to the woman's goal." 

She said ; but at the happy word " he lives " 
My father stoop'd, refather'd,^ o'er my wounds. 
So those two foes above my fallen life. 
With brow to brow, like night and evening, mixt 
Their dark and gray, while Psyche ever stole 
A Httle nearer ; till the babe that by us, 
Half-lapt in glowing gauze and golden brede,^ 
Lay like a new-fall'n meteor on the grass, 

Uncar'd for, spied its mother and began 120 

A blind and babbling laughter, and to dance 
Its body, and reach its fatling * innocent arms 
And lazy lingering fingers. She the appeal 
Brook'd not, but clamoring out, " Mine — mine — not yours. 
It is not yours, but mine ; give me the child," 
Ceas'd all on tremble ;^ piteous was the cry. 
So stood the unhappy mother open-mouth'd, 
And turn'd each face her way. Wan was her cheek 
With hollow watch, her blooming mantle torn. 
Red grief and mother's hunger in her eye, 130 

1 Encumbrance ; that which makes motion difficult. 

2 Made again a father, his son having revived. 

3 Embroidery. ■* A diminutive of fat. 

5 "On tremble," i.e., a-tremble. For like usage of the early English 
" on " see " on sleep," Acts xiii. 36. 



114 THE PRINCESS: [canto vi. 

And down dead-heavy sank her curls, and half 

The sacred mother's bosom, panting, burst 

The laces toward her babe ; but she nor car'd 

Nor knew it, clamoring on, till Ida heard, 

Look'd up, and rising slowly from me, stood 

Erect and silent, striking with her glance 

The mother, me, the child. But he that lay 

Beside us, Cyril, batter'd as he was, 

Trail'd himself up on one knee ; then he drew 

Her robe to meet his lips, and down she look'd 140 

At the arm'd man sideways, pitying as it seem'd, 

Or self-involv'd ; 1 but when she learnt his face. 

Remembering his ill-omen'd song, arose 

Once more thro' all her height, and o'er him grew 

Tall as a figure lengthen'd on the sand 

When the tide ebbs in sunshine ; and he said : 

/' O fair and strong and terrible ! Lioness 
That with your long locks play the lion's mane! 
But Love and Nature, these are two more terrible 
And stronger. See, your foot is on our necks, 150 

We vanquish'd, you the victor of your will.^ 
What would you more ? Give her the child! Remain 
Orb'd in your isolation. He is dead. 
Or all as dead ; henceforth we let you be. 
Win you the hearts of women ; and beware 
Lest, where you seek the common love of these, 
The common hate with the revolving wheel 
Should drag you down, and some great Nemesis ^ 

1 Wrapped up in thought. 

^ ** Victor of your will," i.e., victor in that which you wished. 

3 In Greek poetry the great retributive justice of the world ; the goddess 
who saw that an exact proportion of individual prosperity was preserved, and 
that the one who became too prosperous, or too set up by his prosperity, was 
reduced or punished. 



CANTO VI.] A MEDLEY. 1 15 

Break from a darken'd future, crown'd widi fire, 

And tread you out forever. But howsoe'er 160 

Fix'd in yourself, never in your own arms 

To hold your own, deny not hers to her ; 

Give her the child! Oh if, I say, you keep 

One pulse that beats true w^oman, if you lov'd 

The breast that fed or arm that dandled you, 

Or own one port 1 of sense not flint to prayer, 

Give her the child ! Or if you scorn to lay it 

Yourself in hands so lately claspt with yours. 

Or speak to her, your dearest, her one fault 

The tenderness, not yours, that could not kill, 170 

Give 7ne it; /will give it her." 

He said. 
At first her eye with slow dilation roll'd 
Dry flame, she Hstening ; after, sank and sank 
And, into mournful twilight mellowing, dwelt 
Full on the child. She took it : " Pretty bud ! 
Lily of the vale! half-open'd bell of the woods! 
Sole comfort of my dark hour, when a world 
Of traitorous friend and broken system made 
No purple in the distance ! ^ mystery, 

Pledge of a love not to be mine, farewell ! 180 

These men are hard upon us as of old ; 
We two must part ; and yet how fain was I 
To dream thy cause embrac'd in mine, to think 
I might be something to thee, when I felt 
Thy helpless warmth about my barren breast 
In the dead prime.^ But may thy mother prove 
As true to thee as false, false, false to me! 
And, if thou needs must bear the yoke, I wish it 

1 Approach; entrance. 

2 "No purple in the distance," i.e., no color, no beauty, in the future. 
" In the distance " is as of a landscape. 

3 " The dead prime," i.e., the silent early morning. 



Ii6 THE PRINCESS: [canto vi. 

Gentle as freedom" — here she kiss'd it; then — 

"All good go with thee! — Take it, sir," and |o 190 

Laid the soft babe in his hard-mailed hands, 

Who turn'd half romid to Psyche as she sprang 

To meet it, with an eye that swum in thanks,^ 

Then felt it sound and whole from head to foot. 

And hugg'd and never hugg'd it close enough. 

And in her hunger mouth'd and mumbled it. 

And hid her bosom with it ; after that 

Put on more calm, and added suppliantly : 

" We two were friends. I go to mine own land 
Forever; find some other. As for me, 200 

I scarce am fit for your great plans ; yet speak to me. 
Say one soft word and let me part^ forgiven." 

But Ida spoke not, rapt upon the child. 
Then Arac: " Ida — 'sdeath! you blame the man; 
You wrong yourselves — the woman is so hard 
Upon the woman.^, Come, a grace ^ to me! 
I am your warrior; I and mine have fought 
Your battle ; kiss her ; take her hand, she weeps ; 
'Sdeath! I would sooner fight thrice o'er than see jt." 

But Ida spoke not, gazing on the ground; 210 

And reddening in the furrows of his chin, 
And mov'd beyond his custom, Gama said : 

*' I've heard that there is iron in the blood, 
And I beheve it. Not one word ? not one? 

1 " Swum in thanks," i.e., swam in thankful tears. 

2 See note 8, p. 44. 

^ This fact Ida's scheme of broadening women's wisdom and sympathies 
would do away with. Much harsh judgment comes from narrowness of ex- 
perience and lack of a knowledge of life. 

4 Favor. 



CANTO VI.] A MEDLEY. 117 

Whence drew you this steel temper? Not from me; 
Not from your mother, now a saint with saints. 
She said you had a heart — I heard her say it — 

* Our Ida has a heart ' — just ere she died — 

* But see that some one with authority 

Be near her still;' and I — I sought for one — 220 

All people said she had authority — 

The Lady Blanche; much profit! Not one word? 

No ! tho' your father sues. See how you stand 

Stiff as Lot's wife,i and all the good knights maim'd — 

I trust that there is no one hurt to death — 

For your wild whim. And was it then for this, 

Was it for this we gave our palace up, 

Where we withdrew from summer heats and state, 

And had our wine and chess beneath the planes, 

And many a pleasant hour with her that's gone, 230 

Ere you were bom to vex us? Is it kind? 

Speak to her, I say. Is this not she of whom. 

When first she came, all fiush'd you said to me 

Now had you got a friend of your own age, 

Now could you share yom: thought, now should men see 

Two women faster welded in one love 

Than pairs of wedlock? she you walk'd with, she 

You talk'd with, whole nights long, up in the tower, 

Of sine and arc, spheroid and azimuth. 

And right ascension,^ — Heaven knows what. And now 240 

A word, but one, one little kindly word, 

Not one to spare her! Out upon you, flint! 

You love nor her, nor me, nor any ; nay. 

You shame your mother's judgment too. Not one? 

You will not? Well — no heart have you, or such 

As fancies, like the vermin in a nut, 

1 After she became a pillar of salt (see Gen. xix. 15-26). 

2 These terms, used in the mathematics of astronomy, are piled up in de- 
rision by the scorn and impatience of the king. 



ii8 THE PRINCESS: [canto vi. 

Have fretted all to dust and bitterness." ^ 

So said the small king, mov'd beyond his wont. 

But Ida stood, nor spoke, drain'd of her force 
By many a varying influence and so long. 250 

Down thro' her Hmbs a drooping languor wept;^ 
Her head a little bent ; and on her mouth 
A doubtful smile dwelt hke a clouded moon 
In a still water. Then brake out my sire, 
Lifting his grim head from my wounds : *' O you, 
Woman, whom we thought woman even now, 
And were half fool'd to let you tend our son. 
Because he might have wish'd it — but we see 
The accomplice of your madness unforgiven, 
And think that you might mix his draught with death, 260 

When your skies change again ; the rougher hand 
Is safer. — On to the tents ; take up the Prince." 

He rose, and while each ear was prick'd to attend 
A tempest, thro' the cloud that dimm'd her broke 
A genial warmth and light once more, and shone n 

Thro' ghttering drops on her sad friend : 

" Come hither, 

Psyche," she cried out, '' embrace me, come. 
Quick, while I melt ; make reconcilement sure 
With one that cannot keep her mind an hour. 

Come to the hollow^ heart they slander so! 270 

Kiss and be friends, hke children being chid! 
/seem no more; /want forgiveness too. 

1 should have had to do with none but maids 
That have no links with men. Ah, false but dear, 

1 " As fancies," etc., i.e., your fancies have worn your heart to dust. 

2 " Down thro' her limbs," etc., i.e., her grief was expressed by a soften- 
ing of her attitude. 

3 Referring to Gama's speech, lines 245-247. 



CANTO VI.] A MEDLEY. 119 

Dear traitor, too much lov'd, why? — why? Yet see, 
Before these kings ^ we embrace you yet once more 
With all forgiveness, all oblivion, 
And trust, not love, you less. — 

And now, O sire, 
Grant me your son, to nurse, to wait upon him. 
Like mine own brother. For my debt to him, 280 

This nightmare weight of gratitude, I know it ; 
Taunt me no more. Yourself and yours shall have 
Free adit.^ We will scatter all our maids 
Till happier times, each to her proper ^ hearth ; 
What use to keep them here — now? Grant my prayer. — 
Help, father, brother, help ; speak to the king ; 
Thaw this male natiu-e to some touch of that^ 
Which kills me with myself, and drags me down 
From my fixt height to mob me up with all 

The soft and milky rabble of womankind, 290 

Poor weakling ev'n as they are." 

Passionate tears 
Follow'd. The king replied not ; Cyril said : 
" Your brother. Lady, — Florian, — ask for him 
Of your great Head, — for he is wounded too, — 
That you may tend upon him with the Prince." 
"Ay so," said Ida, with a bitter smile, 
" Our laws are broken ; let him enter too." 
Then Violet, she that sang the mournful song,^ 
And had a cousin tumbled ^ on the plain, 

Petition'd too for him. "Ay so," she said, 300 

" I stagger in the stream ; I cannot keep 
My heart an eddy from the brawling hour ; 
We break our laws with ease, but let it be." 

1 As witnesses most solemn and sacred (see Note 2, p. 83). 

2 Access. 3 Own. ^ Susceptibility ; tenderness ; pity. 

5 See Canto IV. lines 19, 20, etc. 

6 Unhorsed. 



I20 THE PRINCESS: [canto vi. 

" Ay so ? " said Blanche. " Amaz'd am I to hear 
Your Highness ; but your Highness breaks with ease 
The law your Highness did not make ; 'twas I. 
I had been wedded wife, I knew mankind, 
And block' d them out ; but these men came to woo 
Your Highness — verily I think to win." 

So she, and turn'd askance a wintry eye. 310 

But Ida, with a voice that like a bell 
Toll'd by an earthquake in a trembling tower, 
Rang ruin, answer'd full of grief and scorn : 

" Fling our doors wide! all, all, not one, but all! 
Not only he, but, by my mother's soul. 
Whatever man lies wounded, friend or foe. 
Shall enter, if he will. Let our girls flit, 
Till the storm die! But had you stood by us, 
The roar that breaks the Pharos ^ from his base 
Had left us rock. — She fain would sting us too, 320 

But shall not. — Pass, and mingle with your hkes. 
We brook no further insult, but are gone." 

She turn'd ; the very nape of her white neck 
Was ros'd 2 with indignation. But the prince 
Her brother came ; the king her father charm'd 
Her wounded soul with words ; nor did mine own 
Refuse her proffer, lastly gave his hand. 

Then us they lifted up, dead weights, and bare 
Straight to the doors. To them the doors gave way 

1 The lighthouse which stood on the island of Pharos, at the entrance to 
the port of Alexandria. It was built by Egyptian kings in the third century 
B.C., and is said to have been four hundred feet in height. 

2 Flushed; reddened. 



CANTO VI.] A MEDLEY. 121 

Groaningji and in the vestal entry shriek'd 330 

The virgin marble under iron heels ; 

And on they mov'd and gain'd the hall, and there 

Rested ; but great the crush was, and each base, 

To left and right, of those tall columns drown'd 

In silken fluctuation and the swarm 

Of female whisperers. At the further end 

Was Ida by the throne, the two great cats ^ 

Close by her, hke supporters on a shield, 

Bow-back'd with fear. But in the center stood 

The common men with rolling eyes ; amaz'd 340 

They glar'd upon the women, and aghast 

The women star'd at these, all silent, save 

When armor clash'd or jingled ; while the day. 

Descending, struck athwart the hall, and shot 

A flying splendor out of brass and steel 

That o'er the statues leapt from head to head, — 

Now fir'd an angry Pallas ^ on the helm, 

Now set a wrathful Dian's * moon on flame, 

And now and then an echo started up. 

And shuddering fled from room to room, and died 350 

Of fright in far apartments. 

Then the voice 
Of Ida sounded, issuing ordinance ; 
And me they bore up the broad stairs, and thro' 
The long-laid galleries, past a hundred doors, 
To one deep chamber shut from sound, and due ^ 

1 Groaning and shrieking at the desecration. The words are used humor- 
ously. 

2 The leopards upon either side, as in heraldry the figures of animals stand 
by a shield. The lion and unicorn are thus a part of the arms of England. 

3 See Note i, p. 35. 

* Diana, or Artemis, to whom was attributed authority over the moon, 
was the goddess of purity. In art she is represented as a maiden of noble 
and severe beauty. Her emblem was the crescent moon. 

5 Given over. 



THE PRINCESS: [canto vii. 

To languid limbs and sickness ; left me in it ; 

And others otherwhere they laid ; and all 

That afternoon a sound arose of hoof 

And chariot, many a maiden passing home 

Till happier times. But some were left of those 360 

Held sagest, and the great lords out and in, 

From those two hosts that lay beside the walls, 

Walk'd at their will, and everything was chang'd. 



Ask me no more. The moon may draw the sea; 

The cloud may stoop from heaven and take the shape, 
With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape ; 

But O too fond, when have I answer'd thee? 
Ask me no more. 

Ask me no more. What answer should I give? 

I love not hollow cheek or faded eye ; 

Yet, O my friend, I will not have thee die! 
Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live ; 
Ask me no more. 

Ask me no more. Thy fate and mine are seal'd. 

I strove against the stream arid all in vain ; 

Let the great river take me to the main. 

No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield; 

Ask me no more.l 



CANTO VII. 

So was their sanctuary violated, 
So their fair college turn'd to hospital ; 
At first with all confusion ; by and by 
Sweet order liv'd again with other laws ; 
A kindlier influence reign'd ; and everywhere 
Low voices,- with the ministering hand, 
1 See Introduction, p. 14. 

2 " Her voice was ever soft. 
Gentle, and low — an excellent thing in woman." 

King Lear, act ii. sc. 3. 



CANTO VII.] A MEDLEY. 123 

Hung round the sick. The maidens came, they talk'd, 

They sang, they read ; till she not fair began 

To gather light, and she that was, became 

Her former beauty treble; and to and fro 10 

With books, with flowers, with angel offices, 

Like creatures native unto gracious act. 

And in their own clear element, they mov'd. 

But sadness on the soul of Ida fell, 
And hatred of her weakness, blent with shame. 
Old studies fail'd; seldom she spoke; but oft 
Clomb 1 to the roofs, and gaz'd alone for hours 
On that disastrous leaguer,^ swarms of men 
Darkening her female field.^ Void was her use, 
And she as one that chmbs a peak to gaze 20 

O'er land and main,'^ and sees a great black cloud 
Dra;g inward from the deeps, a wall of night. 
Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore,^ 
And suck the blinding splendor from the sand. 
And, quenching lake by lake and tarn ^ by tarn, 
Expunge the world. So far'd she gazing there ; 
So blacken'd all her world in secret ; blank 
And waste it seem'd and vain ; till down she came, 
And found fair peace once more among the sick. 

1 The old past tense of climb. 

2 Camp. The word is allied to the German lager {" camp "), and to the 
English ** lie," " lair," etc. 

3 " Female field," i.e., both the field belonging to the college estate and 
the cause of the higher education of women and celibate life, to which she had 
given her efforts. 

* Tennyson said in a letter to Mr. Dawson that this simile was suggested 
by " a coming storm as seen from the top of Snowdon." It is also in the 
Iliad, Book IV. line 275. 

^ " The slope of sea," etc., i.e., the slope which the sea seems to make 
from the horizon to the shore. 

6 A small mountain lake. 



124 THE PRINCESS: [canto vii. 

And twilight dawn'd, and morn by morn the lark 30 

Shot up and shrill'd in flickering gyres,i but I 
Lay silent in the muffled cage of hfe ; 
And twilight gloom'd ; and, broader grown, the bowers 
Drew the great night into themselves, and heaven, 
Star after star, arose and fell ; but I, 
Deeper than those weird doubts could reach me, lay 
Quite sunder'd from the moving universe, 
Nor knew what eye was on me, nor the hand 
That nurs'd me, more than infants in their sleep. 

But Psyche tended Florian. With her oft, 40 

Melissa came ; for Blanche had gone, but left 
Her child among us, willing she should keep 
Court favor. Here and there the small bright head, 
A Kght of healing, glanc'd about the couch. 
Or thro' the parted silks ^ the tender face 
Peep'd, shining in upon the wounded man 
With blush and smile, a medicine in themselves 
To wile the length from languorous hours, and draw 
The sting from pain. Nor seem'd it strange that soon 
He rose up whole, and those fair charities 50 

Join'd at her side ; nor stranger seem'd that hearts 
So gentle, so employ'd, should close in love, 
Than when two dewdrops on the petal shake 
To the same sweet air, and tremble deeper down, 
And slip at once all fragrant into one. 

Less prosperously the second suit obtain'd ^ 
At first with Psyche. Not tho' Blanche had sworn 
That after that dark night among the fields 
She needs must wed him for her own good name, 
Not tho' he built upon the babe restor'd, 60 

1 The lark sings as it rises in spiral turns. 

2 Hangings. 3 Prevailed; succeeded. 



CANTO VII.] A MEDLEY. 125 

Nor tho' she lik'd him, yielded she, but fear'd 
To incense the Head once more ; till on a day 
When Cyril pleaded, Ida came behind, 
Seen but of Psyche ; on her foot she hung 
A moment, and she heard, at which her face 
A httle flush'd, and she past on ; but each 
Assum'd from thence a half-consent involv'd 
In stillness,! phghted troth, and were at peace. 

Nor only these ; Love in the sacred halls 
Held carnival at will, and flying struck 70 

With showers of random sweet on maid and man.^ 
Nor did her father cease to press my claim, 
Nor did mine own, now reconciPd ; nor yet 
Did those twin brothers, risen again and whole ; 
Nor Arac, satiate ^ with his victory. 

But I lay still, and with me oft she sat. 
Then came a change ; for sometimes I would catch 
Her hand in wild delirium, gripe it hard. 
And fling it like a viper off, and shriek, 

"You are not Ida!" clasp it once again, 80 

And call her Ida, tho' I knew her not, 
And call her sweet, as if in irony. 
And call her hard and cold, which seem'd a truth. 
* And still she fear'd that I should lose my mind. 
And often she believ'd that I should die ; 
Till, out of long frustration* of her care. 
And pensive tendance in the all-weary noons. 
And watches in the dead, the dark, when clocks 

1 " Involv'd in stillness," i.e., signified or implied in silence. 

2 " Love in the sacred halls," etc., i.e., love cast at random among the 
maids and soldiers, as sweetmeats from one to another in Italian streets dur- 
ing carnival. 

3 Satiated; a shortened form, as " violate " in Canto VI. line 44. 
* Disappointment; defeat. 



126 THE PRINCESS: [canto \ii. 

Throbb'd thunder thro' the palace floors, or call'd 

On flying Time from all their silver tongues ; 90 

And out of memories of her kindlier days, 

And sidelong glances at my father's grief, 

And at the happy lovers, heart in heart ; 

And out of hauntings of my spoken love, 

And lonely listenings to my mutter'd dream, 

And often feeHng of the helpless hands. 

And wordless broodings on the wasted cheek, — 

From all a closer interest flourish'd 1 up, 

Tenderness, touch by touch, and last, to these, 

Love,2 like an Alpine harebell hung with tears 100 

By some cold morning glacier ; frail at first 

And feeble, all unconscious of itself, 

But such as gather'd color day by day. 

Last I woke sane, but well-nigh close to death 
For weakness. It was evening ; silent light 
Slept on the painted walls, wherein were wrought 
Two grand designs ; for on one side arose 
The women up in wild revolt, and storm'd 
At the Oppian law.^ Titanic shapes, they cramm'd 
The forum, and, half crush'd among the rest, no 

A dwarf -like Cato cower'd. On the other side 

1 Bloomed; blossomed. 

2 Upon this word is the accent and climax of the whole description begin- 
ning at line 76. 

3 A sumptuary law proposed by Caius Oppius and passed (215 B.C.) dur- 
ing the public distress in Rome which succeeded Hannibal's march toward 
that city. It provided that no woman should have in her dress more than 
half an ounce of gold, nor wear a garment of different colors, nor ride in 
a carriage in the city or within a mile of it, unless at a public sacrifice. 
Eighteen years after, when the women demanded the repeal of the law, they 
went about the streets and pressed into the forum with petitions until they 
gained its annulment. Cato the Elder, who then was consul, opposed the 
repeal. 



CANTO VII.] A MEDLEY. 127 

Hortensia ^ spoke against the tax ; behind, 
A train of dames ; by ax and eagle 2 sat, 
With all their foreheads drawn in Roman scowls, 
And half the wolf's milk ^ curdled in their veins, 
The fierce triumvirs ; and before them paus'd 
Hortensia, pleading ; angry was her face. 

I saw the forms ; I knew not where I was ; 
They did but look like hollow shows ; nor more 
Sweet Ida. Palm to palm she sat; the dew 120 

Dwelt in her eyes, and softer all her shape, 
And rounder, seem'd. I mov'd ; I sigh'd ; a touch. 
Came round my wrist, and tears upon my hand. 
Then all for languor and self-pity ran 
Mine down my face, and with what life I had. 
And hke a flower that cannot all unfold— 
So drench'd it is with tempest— to the sun. 
Yet, as it may, turns toward him, I on her 
Fixt my faint eyes, and utter'd whisperingly : 

** If you be what I think you, some sweet dream, 130 

I would but ask you to fulfill yourself ; 
But if you be that Ida whom I knew, 
I ask you nothing ; only, if a dream, 
Sweet dream, be perfect. I shall die to-night. 
Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die." 

I could no more, but lay Hke one in trance, 

1 Daughter of Hortensius, a Roman orator. After the assassination of 
Julius Ca:sar (44 B.C.), when the second triumvirate had imposed a heavy 
tax on weakhy matrons to defray the expenses of their war, Hortensia came 
forward as the woman's advocate, and spoke so ably that a large part of the 
tax was remitted. 

2 The ax signifying civil power in the Roman republic, and the eagle, — 
the standard of the army, — military glory. 

3 The reference is to the legend of the she-wolf suckling Romulus and 
Remus. 



128 THE PRINCESS: [canto vii. 

That hears his burial talk'd of by his friends, 

And cannot speak, nor move, nor make one sign, 

But Hes and dreads his doom. She turn'd ; she paus'd ; 

She stoop'd ; and out of languor leapt a cry ; 140 

Leapt fiery Passion from the brinks of death ; 

And I believ'd that in the living world ^ 

My spirit clos'd with Ida's at the lips ; 

Till back I fell, and from mine arms she rose 

Glo^ving all over noble shame ; and all 

Her falser self ^ slipt from her like a robe. 

And left her woman, lovelier in her mood 

Than in her mold that other,^ when she came 

From barren deeps to conquer all with love ; 

And down the streaming crystal dropt ; and she 150 

Far-fleeted by the purple island sides, 

Naked, a double light in air and wave, 

To meet her Graces, where they deck'd her out 

For worship without end. Nor end of mine. 

Stateliest, for thee! But mute she glided forth, 

Nor glanc'd behind her, and I sank and slept, 

Fill'd thro' and thro' with love, a happy sleep. 

Deep in the night I woke ; she, near me, held 
A volume of the Poets of her land. 
There to herself, all in low tones, she read: 160 

" Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white; 
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk ; 
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font. 
The firefly wakens ; waken thou with me. 

1 " The living world," i.e., the real world, not that of dreams or shadows. 

2 " Her falser self," i.e., her hard self, unsympathetic with human suffering. 

3 Aphrodite (Venus), the goddess of love, who, in Greek myth, was born 
of the foam of the sea. Water (" streaming crystal ") dropped from her body. 
She passed swiftly and lightly ("far-fleeted") by Cythera and Cyprus, the sides 
of which sprang into bloom at her coming, and entered Paphos. Here the 
Graces met her, and kept her always beautiful. 



CANTO VII.] A MEDLEY. 129 

' ' Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost ; 
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me. 

" Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars ;1 
And all thy heart lies open unto me. 

" Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves 
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me. 1 70 

" Now folds the lily all her sweetness up, 
And slips into the bosom of the lake ; 
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip 
Into my bosom and be lost in me." 

I heard her turn the page ; she found a small 
Sweet idyl, and once more, as low, she read : 

* ' Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height ; 
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang), 
In height and cold, the splendor of the hills ? 

But cease to move so near the heavens, and cease 180 

To glide, a sunbeam, by the blasted pine. 
To sit, a star, upon the sparkling spire ; 
And come, for Love is of the valley, come, 
For Love is of the valley, come thou down 
And find him ; by the happy threshold, he, 
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize. 
Or red with spirted purple of the vats. 
Or foxlike in the vine ; nor cares to walk 
With Death and Morning on the silver horns,2 
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine, 1 90 

Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice, 
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls 
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors. 3 

1 " Danae to the stars," i.e., open to the light of the stars. In Greek 
story, Danae, a princess, was confined in a tower. To her Zeus gained ad- 
mittance by changing into a shower of gold. 

2 The imagery of the song is of Swiss scenery, and the silver horns (as 
Matterhorn) are white mountain tops. 

3 " The firths of ice," etc., i.e., glaciers which pile up (" huddle ") ice in 
their downward passage, break in crevasses ("furrow-cloven"), and melt 
when they reach the lower and warmer parts of the mountain. The " dusky " 
discharge is dark by comparison with the ice and snow from which it issues. 

9 



130 THE PRINCESS: [canto vil 

But follow ; let the torrent dance thee down 

To find him in the valley ; let the wild 

Lean-headed eagles yelp alone, and leave 

The monstrous ledges there to slope and spill 

Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke, 

That like a broken purpose waste in air. 

So waste not thou, but come; for all the vales 200 

Await thee ; azure pillars of the hearth 

Arise to thee; the children call, and I, 

Thy shepherd, pipe, and sweet is every sound,— 

Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet ; — 

Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn, . 

The moan of doves in immemorial elms. 

And murmuring of innumerable bees." 1 

So she, low ton'd ; while with shut eyes I lay- 
Listening ; then look'd. Pale was the perfect face ; 
The bosom with long sighs labor'd ; and meek 210 

Seem'd the full lips, and mild the luminous eyes, 
And the voice trembled, and the hand. She said 
Brokenly that she knew it, she had fail'd 
In sweet humility, — had fail'd in all; 
That all her labor was but as a block ^ 
Left in the quarry ; but she still were loath, 
She still were loath to yield herself to one 
That wholly scorn'd to help their equal rights 
Against the sons of men and barbarous laws. 
She pray'd me not to judge their cause from her 220 

That wrong'd it, sought far less for truth than power 
In knowledge ; something wild within her breast, 
A greater than all knowledge, beat her down. 

1 " This beautiful song is," says J. Churton Collins, " a splendid illustra- 
tion of Tennyson's method. Taking the framework from Theocritus [a part 
of the eleventh Idyl], he wreathes round, beneath, and over it such a wealth 
of original ornament that it is barely discernible. . . . The whole passage is j 
a marvelous illustration of Tennyson's power of catching and rendering in 
English the charm of the best and sweetest Greek pastoral poetry." 

2 Of marble left unfinished by the laborers. 



CANTO VII.] A MEDLEY. 131 

And she had nurs'd me there from week to week. 
Much had she learnt in Httle time. In part 
It was ill counsel had misled the girl 
To vex true hearts ; yet was she but a girl — 
"Ah, fool, and made myself a queen of farce! 
When comes another such? Never, I think, 
Till the sun drop, dead, from the signs." 1 

Her voice 230 

Chok'd, and her forehead sank upon her hands, 
And her great heart thro' all the faultful past 
Went sorrowing in a pause I dar'd not break ; 
Till notice of a change in the dark world 
Was lispt about the acacias, and a bird, 
That early woke to feed her little ones, 
Sent from a dewy breast a cry for light. 
She mov'd, and at her feet the volume fell. 

" Blame not thyself too much," I said, '' nor blame 
Too much the sons of men, and barbarous laws ; 240 

These were the rough ways of the world till now. 
Henceforth thou hast a helper, me, that know 
The woman's cause is man's ; they rise or sink 
Together, dwarf'd or godlike, bond or free. 
For she that out of Lethe ^ scales with man 
The shining steps of Nature, shares with man 
His nights, his days, moves with him to one goal, 
Stays all the fair young planet ^ in her hands, — 
If she be small, sHght-natur'd, miserable. 
How shall men grow? Bat work no more alone! 250 

1 The signs of the zodiac. 

2 Oblivion ; the river of oblivion in Hades. The souls of the dead who 
drank of this river, so the Greeks taught, might return again to earth to live 
in a new body. The phrase " out of Lethe " must here mean from her birth. 
See Wordsworth's Ode on Intimations of Immortality: " Our birth is but a 
sleep and a forgetting." 

3 Generation ; a planet is a star revolving in an orbit. 



132 THE PRINCESS:' [canto vii. 

Our place is much ; as far as in us lies 

We two will serve them both in aiding her, — 

Will clear away the parasitic forms ^ 

That seem to keep her up but drag her down, 

Will leave her space to burgeon 2 out of all 

Within her, let her make herself her own 

To give or keep, to live and learn and be 

All that not harms ^ distinctive womanhood. 

For woman is not undevelopt man, 

But diverse ; could we make her as the man, 260 

Sweet Love were slain. His dearest bond is this, 

Not like to like, but like in difference. 

Yet in the long years liker must they grow ; 

The man be more of woman, she of man ; 

He gain in sweetness and in moral height, 

Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world ; 

She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care. 

Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind,* 

Till at the last she set herself to man, 

Like perfect music unto noble words. 270 

And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, 

Sit side by side, full summ'd in all their powers. 

Dispensing harvest, sowing the to-be,^ 

Self reverent each and reverencing each. 

Distinct in individualities, 

But like each other ev'n as those who love. 

Then comes the statelier Eden ^ back to men ; 

1 " Parasitic forms," i.e., the empty shows of respect and reverence which 
sap her strength and check her growth, as a parasitic vine drags down an elm. 

2 Bud ; put forth new branches. 

3 " Not harms "is a common order of words with Shakespeare and his 
contemporaries, and also in the prose of Milton, 

4 ** Nor lose," etc., i.e., not lose faith and serenity and calmness in gaining 
knowledge of practical difficulties and larger human sympathies. 

5 See similar usage, line 335. 

6 The perfect joy of Eden before sin came into the world. 



I 



CANTO VII.] A MEDLEY. 133 

Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm ; 
Then springs the crowning race of humankind. 
May these things be ! " 

Sighing she spoke : " I fear 280 

They will not." 

" Dear, but let us type ^ them now 
In our own lives, and this proud watchword rest 
Of equal,2 seeing either sex alone 
Is half itself, and in true marriage lies 
Nor equal, nor unequal ; each fulfills 
Defect in each, and always, thought in thought, 
Purpose in ptupose, will in will, they grow, 
The single pure and perfect animal. 
The two-cell'd heart beating, with one full stroke, 
Life." 

And again sighing she spoke: "A dream 290 

That once was mine! What woman taught you this? " 

" Alone," I said, " from earher than I know, 
Immers'd in rich foreshadowings of the world, 
I lov'd the woman \^ he that doth not, lives 
A drowning life, besotted in sweet self. 
Or pines in sad experience worse than death, 
Or keeps his wing'd affections dipt with crime. 
Yet was there one thro* whom I lov'd her, one 
Not learned, save in gracious household ways. 
Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants, 300 

No angel, but a dearer being, all dipt 
In angel instincts, breathing Paradise, 
Interpreter between the gods and men, 
Who look'd all native to her place, and yet 

1 Typify ; show by example. 

2 " This proud watchword," etc., i.e., let us put aside this proud watch- 
word of the equality of the sexes. 

3 Woman in the abstract ; womankind. 



134 THE PRINCESS: [canto vii. 

On tiptoe seem'd to touch upon a sphere 

Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce 

Sway'd to her from their orbits as they mov'd, 

And girdled her with music.^ Happy he 

With such a mother! faith in womankind 

Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high 310 

Comes easy to him, and tho' he trip and fall 

He shall not Wind his soul with clay." 

" But I," 
Said Ida, tremulously, " so all unlike — 
It seems you love to cheat yourself with words ; 
This mother is your model. I have heard 
Of your strange doubts ; they well might be ; I seem 
A mockery to my own self. Never, Prince ; 
You cannot love me." 

" Nay, but thee," I said, 
" From year-long poring on thy pictur'd eyes. 
Ere seen I lov'd, and lov'd thee seen, and saw 320 

Thee woman thro' the crust of iron moods 
That mask'd thee from men's reverence up, and forc'd 
Sweet love on pranks of saucy boyhood. Now, 
Giv'n back to life, to life indeed, thro' thee, 
Indeed I love. The new day comes, the light 
Dearer for night, as dearer thou for faults 
Liv'd over. Lift thine eyes ; my doubts are dead, 
My haunting sense of hollow shows \^ the change, 
This truthful change in thee has kill'd it. Dear, 
Look up, and let thy nature strike on mine, 330 

Like yonder morning on the blind half- world ; 
Approach and fear not ; breathe upon my brows ; 

1 The music of the spheres was, according to the teaching of the Greek 
philosopher Pythagoras, produced by the movement of the heavenly bodies 
the seven planets giving out the seven notes of the gamut. The melodies 
were thought most exquisite, and too delicate to be heard by the ears of men. 

2 Feeling that appearances of Ida were unreal. 



CANTO VII."! ^ MEDLEY. 135 

In that fine air I tremble, all the past 

Melts mistlike into this bright hour, and this 

Is morn to more,i and all the rich to-come 

Reels, as the golden autumn woodland reels 

Athwart the smoke of burning weeds. Forgive me, 

I waste my heart in signs ; let be. My bride, 

My wife, my hfe! O we will walk this world, 

Yok'd in all exercise of noble end, 340 

And so thro' those dark gates across the wild 

That no man knows. Indeed I love thee ; come, 

Yield thyself up ; my hopes and thine are one. 

Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself ; 

Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me." 

1 " Morn to more," i.e., the beginning of more. 



136 THE PRINCESS: [conclusion. 



CONCLUSION. 

So clos'd our tale, of which I give you all 

The random scheme as wildly as it rose. 

The words are mostly mine ; for when we ceas'd 

There came a minute's pause, and Walter said, 

" I wish she had not yielded! " then to me, 

"What if you drest it up poetically! " 

So pray'd the men, the women. I gave assent. 

Yet how to bind the scatter'd scheme of seven 

Together in one sheaf? What style could suit? 

The men requir'd that I should give throughout 

The sort of mock-heroic gigantesque ^ 

With which we banter'd Httle Lilia first ; 

The women — and perhaps they felt their power, 

For something in the ballads which they sang, 

Or in their silent influence as they sat. 

Had ever seem'd to wrestle with burlesque, 

And drove us, last, to quite a solemn close — 

They hated banter, wish'd for something real, 

A gallant fight, a noble princess ; why 

Not make her true-heroic — true-sublime? 

Or all, they said, as earnest as the close? 

Which yet with such a framework scarce could be. 

Then rose a little feud betwixt the two. 

Betwixt the mockers and the realists ; 

And I, betwixt them both, to please them both. 

And yet to give the story as it rose, 

1 Gigantic in character. 



CONCLUSION.] A MEDLEY. 137 

I mov'd as in a strange diagonal, 

And maybe neither pleas'd myself nor them. 

But Lilia pleas'd me, for she took no part 
In our dispute. The sequel of the tale 30 

Had touch'd her ; and she sat, she pluck'd the grass, 
She flung it from her, thinking ; last, she fixt 
A showery glance upon her aunt, and said, 
"You — tell us what we are;" who might have told — 
For she was cramm'd with theories out of books — 
But that there rose a shout. The gates were clos'd 
At sunset, and the crowd were swarming now, 
To take their leave, about the garden rails. 

So I and some went out to these. We climb'd 
The slope to Vivian-place, and turning saw 40 

The happy valleys, half in hght and half 
Far shadowing from the west, a land of peace. 
Gray halls alone among their massive groves ; 
Trim hamlets ; here and there a rustic tower 
Half lost in belts of hop and breadths of wheat ; 
The shimmering glimpses of a stream ; the seas ; 
A red sail, or a white ; and far beyond, 
Imagin'd more than seen, the skirts of France. 

" Look there! a garden! " said my college friend, 
The Toryi member's elder son, "and there! 50 

God bless the narrow sea 2 which keeps her off, 
And keeps our Britain, whole within herself, 
A nation yet, the rulers and the rul'd — 
Some sense of duty, something of a faith. 
Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made, 

1 The Tory was the more conservative of the two great political parties in 
Great Britain. It is now called Conservative. " Member " is commonly 
used for " Member of Parliament." 

'^ Strait of Dover. 



138 THE PRINCESS: [conclusion. 

Some patient force to change them when we will, 

Some civic manhood firm against the crowd — 

But yonder,! whiff! there comes a sudden heat, 

The gravest citizen seems to lose his head, 

The king is scar'd, the soldier will not fight, 60 

The httle boys begin to shoot and stab, 

A kingdom topples over with a shriek, 

Like an old woman, and down rolls the world 

In mock heroics stranger than our own ; 

Revolts, repubhcs, revolutions, most 

No graver than a schoolboys' barring out ; 

Too comic for the solemn things they are. 

Too solemn for the comic touches in them, 

Like our wild Princess with as wise a dream 

As some of theirs. God bless the narrow seas! 70 

I wish they were a whole Atlantic broad." 

" Have patience," I rephed, " ourselves are full 
Of social wrong ; and maybe wildest dreams 
Are but the needful preludes of the truth. 
For me, the genial day, the happy crowd. 
The sport half science, fill me with a faith.2 
This fine old world of ours is but a child 
Yet in the gocart. Patience ! Give it time 
To learn its hmbs ; there is a hand that guides." 

In such discourse we gain'd the garden rails, 80 

And there we saw Sir Walter where he stood, 

1 In France. This passage did not appear in the first editions, not, indeed, 
till 1850. It was doubtless incited by the revolution of 1848, when Louis 
Philippe was forced from the French throne and a republic established in 
place of a monarchy. " The poem," says Dawson, " is not improved as a 
work of art by the insertion." 

2 " This strong faith runs through all of Tennyson's poems. . . . This 
beautiful hope pervading all his writings is one of the secrets of the poet's 
popularity and influence." — Dawson. 



CONCLUSION.] A MEDLEY. 139 

Before a tower of crimson holly-oaks,^ 

Among six boys, head under head, and look'd 

No little lily-handed baronet he, 

A great, broad-shoulder'd, genial Englishman, 

A lord of fat prize oxen and of sheep, 

A raiser of huge melons and of pine,2 

A patron of some thirty charities, 

A pamphleteer on guano and on grain, 

A quarter-sessions chairman, — abler none; 90 

Fair-hair'd, and redder than a windy mom ; 

Now shaking hands with him, now him, of those 

That stood the nearest ; now address'd to speech ; 

Who spoke few words and pithy, such as clos'd ^ 

Welcome, farewell, and welcome for the year 

To follow. A shout rose again, and made 

The long line of the approaching rookery * swerve 

From the elms, and shook the branches ^ of the deer 

From slope to slope thro' distant ferns, and rang 

Beyond the bourn of sunset, — oh, a shout 100 

More joyful than the city roar that hails 

Premier or king! Why should not these great Sirs 

Give up their parks some dozen times a year 

To let the people breathe? ^ So thrice they cried, 

I likewise, and in groups they stream'd away. 

But we went back to the abbey, and sat on, 

1 The holm, or evergreen, oak. 

2 Pineapples raised in hothouses. 

3 Inclosed; embraced. 

* Means here the rooks themselves rather than their abiding place. They 
were returning at the end of the day. 

5 Antlers. 

6 See Note i, p. 82. "The time thought little of them, neither did 
Tennyson ; and the crowd round the abbey where ' The Princess ' is in- 
vented are content to cry, and Tennyson seems to think it is enough for them 
to ask, 'Why should not these great Sirs,' etc. " — Stopford A. Brooke. 



140 THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY. [conclusion. 

So much the gathering darkness charm'd. We sat 

But spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie, 

Perchance upon the future man. The walls 

Blacken'd about us, bats wheel'd, and owls whoop'd, no 

And gradually the powers of the night, 

That range above the region of the wind, 

Deepening the courts of twihght, broke them up 

Thro' all the silent spaces of the worlds, 

Beyond all thought, into the heaven of heavens. 

Last little Lilia, rising quietly, 
Disrob'd the glimmering statue of Sir Ralph 
From those rich silks, and home well pleas'd we went. 



I 



For the Study of Literature 

Matthews' Introduction to the Study of American Literature. 

By Brander Matthews, Professor of Literature in Columbia Col- 
lege. Cloth, i2mo, 256 pages, ^I.OO 

A text-book of literature on an original plan, admirably designed to 

guide, to supplement and to stimulate the student's reading of American 

authors. 

Watkins's American Literature (Literature Primer Series). By Mil- 
dred Cabell Watkins. Flexible cloth, i8mo, 224 pages, 35 cents. 
A text-book of American Literature adapted to the comprehension of 
pupils in common and graded schools. 

Seven American Classics, containing choice literary selections from 
Irving, Cooper, Bryant, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, 
Cloth, i2mo, 218 pages, 50 cents 

Brooke's English Literature (Literature Primer Series). By the Rev. 

Stopford Brooke, M. A. New edition, revised and corrected. 

Flexible cloth, I Bmo, 240 pages, .... 35 cents 
Equally valuable as a class-book for schools or as a book of reference 
for general readers. 

Seven British Classics, containing choice literary selections from 
Addison, Scott, Lamb, Campbell, Macauley, Tennyson, Thackeray. 
Cloth, i2mo, 217 pages, . ^ 50 cents 

Smith's Studies in English Literature, containing complete selec- 
tions from Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon and Milton, with 
a History of English Literature from the earliest times to the death 
of Dryden in 1700. By M. W. Smith, A. M. 
Cloth, i2mo, 427 pages, $1.20 

Cathcart's Literary Reader. A manual of English Literature con- 
taining typical selections from the best British and American 
authors, with biographical and critical sketches, portraits and fac- 
simile autographs. By George R. Cathcart. 
Cloth, leather back, 12 mo, 541 pages, .... ?I.I5 



Copies of any of the above books will be sent, prepaid, to any address on 
receipt of the price by the Publishers: 

American Book Company 

New York . . Cincinnati . • Chicago 

[79] 



American Literature 

BY 

MILDRED CABELL WATKINS. 
Flexible cloth, i8mo. 224 pages. Price, 35 cents. 



THE eminently practical character of this work will 
at once commend it to all who are interested in 
forming and guiding the literary, tastes of the young, 
and especially to teachers who have long felt the need of a 
satisfactory text-book in American literature which will 
give pupils a just appreciation of its character and worth 
as compared with the literature of other countries. In 
this convenient volume the story of American literature is 
told to young Americans in a manner which is at once 
brief, simple, graceful, and, at the same time, impressive 
and intelligible. The marked features and characteristics 
of this work may be stated as follows : 

Due prominence is given to the#ivorks of the real makers of our 
American literature. 

All the leading authors are grouped in systematic order and classes. 

Living writers, including minor authors, are also given their proper 
share of attention. 

A brief summary is appended to each chapter to aid the memory in 
fixing the salient facts of the narrative. 

Estimates of the character and value of an author's productions are 
often crystallized in a single phrase, so quaint and expressive that it is 
not easily forgotten by the reader. 

Numerous select extracts from our greatest v^riters are given in their 
proper connection. 

Copies of Watkins's American Literature will be sent prepaid by the 
publishers on receipt of the price. 

American Book Company 

New York ♦ Cincinnati ♦ Chicago 

(82) 



An Introduction to the 

Study of American Literature 

By BRANDER MATTHEWS 

Pro/essor of Literature in Colu^nbia College 

Cloth, i2mo, 256 pages - - - Price, $1.00 



A text-book of literature on an originar plan, and conforming with 
the best methods of teaching. 

Admirably designed to guide, to supplement, and to stimulate the 
student's reading of American authors. 

Illustrated with a fine collection of facsimile manuscripts, portraits 
of authors, and views of their homes and birthplaces. 

Bright, clear, and fascinating, it is itself a Hterary work of high rank. 

The book consists mostly of delightfully readable and yet compre- 
hensive little biographies of the fifteen greatest and most representative 
American writers. Each of the sketches contains a critical estimate of 
the author and his works, which is the more valuable coming, as it does, 
from one who is himself a master. The work is rounded out by four 
general chapters which take up other prominent authors and discuss the 
history and conditions of our literature as a whole ; and there is at the 
end of the book a complete chronology of the best American literature 
from the beginning down to 1896, 

Each of the fifteen biographical sketches is illustrated by a fine 
portrait of its subject and views of his birthplace or residence and in 
some cases of both. They are also accompanied by each author's 
facsimile manuscript covering one or two pages. The book contains 
excellent portraits of many other authors famous in American literature. 



Copies of Brander Matthews' Introduction to the Study of American 
Literature will be sent prepaid to any address^ on receipt of the price ^ 
by the Publishers : 

American Book Company 

New York ♦ Cincinnati ♦ Chicago 



WEBSTER'S SCHOOL DICTIONARIES. 

REVISED EDITIONS. 



Webster's School Dictionaries in their revised form 

constitute a progressive series, carefully graded and especially adapted 
for Primary Schools, Common Schools, High Schools, Academies, etc. 
They have all been thoroughly revised, entirely reset, and made to 
conform in all essential points to the great standard authority — 

Webster's International Dictionary. 

WEBSTER'S PRIMARY SCHOOL DICTIONARY. 

Cloth, i2mo. 336 pp. $0.48 

Containing over 20,000 words and meanings, with over 400 illustrations. 

WEBSTER'S COMMON SCHOOL DICTIONARY. 

Cloth, i2mo. 416 pp. ,72 

Containing over 25,000 words and meanings, with over 500 illustrations. 

WEBSTER'S HIGH SCHOOL DICTIONARY. 

Cloth, 8vo. 530 pp 98 

Containing about 37,000 words and definitions, and an appendix giving a pronouncing 
vocabulary of Biblical, Classical, Mythological, Historical, and Geographical proper 
names, with over 800 illustrations. 

WEBSTER'S ACADEMIC DICTIONARY. 

Cloth, 8vo. 736 pp $1.50 

Abridged directly from the International Dictionary, and giving the orthography, 
pronunciations, definitions and synonyms of the large vocabulary of words in common 
use, with an appendix containing various useful tables, with over 800 illustrations. 

The Same, Indexed . $1.80 

SPECIAL EDITIONS. 

W^ebster's Condensed Dictionary. Cloth $1.44 

The Same, Indexed 1.75 

Webster's Condensed Dictionary. Half calf .... 2.40 

W^ebster's Handy Dictionary. Cloth .15 

W^ebster's Pocket Dictionary. Cloth .57 

In Roan Flexible .69 

In Roan Tucks 78 

"Webster's American People's Dictionary and Manual . . .48 

Webster's Practical Dictionary. Cloth 80 

Webster's Countinghouse Dictionary. Sheep, Indexed . . 2.40 

Copies 0/ atiy of Webster^ s Dictionaries will be se7tt, prepaid, to any address on 
receipt of the price by the Publishers : 

American Book Company 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI CHICAGO 

(77) 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2009 

PreservatlonTechnologie: 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATIC 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-2111 




014 546 606 4 



wm. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



Eclectic 

ARNOLD'S SOHRAB 

BURKE'S SPEECH O^ _ 

COLERIDGE'S RIME GF^TfWpPWlPflpwpiPlip 

DEFOE'S HISTORY OF THE PLAGUE iKl LdteON, 

DE QUINCEY'S REVOLT OF THE TARTARS . . 

EMERSON'S AMERICAN SCHOLAR, SELF- 
RELIANCE, COMPENSATION 

GEORGE ELIOT'S SILAS MARNER 

..GOLDSMITH'S VICAR OF WAKEFIELD .... 

IRVING'S SKETCH-BOOK— SELECTIONS .... 

IRVING'S TALES OF A TR'.v^ELER 

MACAULAY'S SECOND ESSAY ON CHATHAM . 

MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON MILTON 

MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON ADDISON 

MACAULAY'S LIFE OF JOHNSON 

MILTON'S L'ALLEGRO, IL PENSEROSO, COMUS, 
LYCIDAS 

MILTON'S PARADISE LOST— Books I and II . . 

POPE'S HOMER'S ILIAD— Books I, VI, XXII, XXIV, . 

SCOTT'S IVANHOE 

SCOTT'S MARMION 

SCOTT'S LADY OF THE LAKE 

SCOTT'S THE ABBOT 

SCOTT'S WOODSTOCK 

SHAKESPEARE'S JULIUS C/^SAR 

SHAKESPEARE'S TWELFTH NIGHT 

SHAKESPEARE'S MERCHANT OF VENICE . . . 

SHAKESPEARE'S MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM . 

SHAKESPEARE'S AS YOU LIKE IT 

SHAKESPEARE'S MACBETH 

SHAKESPEARE'S HAMLET . 

SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY PAPERS-(The Spectator) 

SOUTHEY'S LIFE OF NELSON 

TENNYSON'S PRINCESS 

WEBSTER'S BUNKER HILL ORATIONS .... 



40 



30 


y 


3S 


* 


20 


Y 




Y 


y> 


V 


20 


V 


20 


■y 


20 


¥ 
y. 



50 
40 



60 
60 



40 



Copies of the Eclectic English Classics will be senty prepaidy to any 
address on receipt of the price by the Publishers : 



AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 



New York 



Cincinnati 



Chicago 



